8'5" x 12' Persian Mashad Rug | Signed Medallion on Red Field | Excellent Condition

This 8'5" x 12' room size rug is a classic workshop Mashad: a deep red field carrying a navy lobed medallion, four heavy corner spandrels, and a wide navy main border framed by ivory guard stripes. It is hand-knotted entirely by hand in wool on a cotton foundation, with a woven cartouche set into the ivory border at one end, the mark of a named atelier rather than an anonymous village loom. The pile is full and even across the whole surface, the selvedges are intact and the cotton fringe is original and undisturbed. Every rug we sell ships with a certificate of authenticity confirming origin, materials and hand-knotted construction.

Design and Motifs

The drawing follows the formal Mashad layout. At the center sits an elongated lobed medallion outlined in dark navy, with an inner cartouche of soft rust holding a small 8 petal rosette and a ring of paired palmettes. Above and below the medallion are pendant finials in ivory and navy, and the 4 corners repeat the medallion vocabulary at a larger scale with split palmettes and curling arabesque vines. The field between is not left open: it is covered edge to edge with an all over floral system of palmettes, serrated leaves, rosettes and fine scrolling vine, drawn in a curved workshop line rather than the angular village manner. The main border alternates large rosettes and palmette heads on navy, with reciprocal vine in the narrow blue stripes and a delicate meandering scroll in the ivory guard bands. The whole composition is symmetrical on both axes, so the rug reads correctly from any seat in the room.

The Color Palette in Detail

The dominant note is a clear true red ground, a shade cooler and brighter than Kashan brick, which gives the rug its warmth without going orange. Against it the navy of the medallion, spandrels and main border is almost black in the shadowed areas and resolves into true indigo where the light catches the pile. The secondary palette is where this piece gets its character: dusty rose and old salmon in the border flowers, soft olive and sage green through the leaves, warm camel and walnut brown in the palmettes, pale ivory in the guard stripes and medallion outlines, with small sparks of turquoise and apricot dropped into individual flower heads. Those muted greens and browns keep the red and navy from reading as a hard two color scheme, and they are what let this rug sit comfortably with wood tones, leather and antique furniture. If you are shopping the palette rather than the town, it belongs squarely with our red and burgundy Persian rugs.

Mashad Origin and Weaving Quality

Mashad is the great city of the Khorasan province in northeast Persia, and its looms have always worked in a workshop tradition rather than a tribal one: a designer sets the cartoon, master weavers follow it, and the result is the curved, drawn quality visible in this field. Khorasan wool is long stapled and takes dye deeply, which is why older Persian Mashad rugs hold their reds and navies for generations instead of going flat. A signed piece like this one means a named workshop stood behind the weaving, and the cartouche woven into the ivory border is part of the rug's record. The back shows a firm, regular knot line with no slack rows or run off in the borders, the kind of consistency that keeps a 12 foot rug lying straight. At 8'5" x 12" wide by 12 feet long it is a proper room size piece, large enough to carry a seating group or a full dining table with the chairs pulled out.