8'7" x 12' Persian Kermanshah Rug | Dusty Red Floral Medallion | Antique Kerman Design

Kermanshah is the old trade name for the finest of the antique Persian Kerman rugs, and this 8'7" x 12' piece shows why the name stuck. The drawing is entirely curvilinear, the pile is a low, even 3/8" wool that has taken on the soft sheen only decades of use can give, and the whole field is worked in the pale, faded-garden palette that collectors hunt for. It is a true room-size rug that sits comfortably in the standard 9x12 Persian rug footprint, and the back in image 5 shows a straight, tightly packed weave on a cotton foundation with no repairs visible in the photographs. Every rug we sell ships with a certificate of authenticity confirming origin, materials and hand-knotted construction.

Design and Motifs

An 8 lobed star medallion anchors the center, outlined in dusty red and filled with a fine lattice of leaves and small blossoms around a single sky blue rosette. Slender floral pendants rise and fall from the medallion at both ends, each one a small cluster of red cartouches and curled leaves. The surrounding field is a dense all over garden: scrolling vines, split palmettes, carnations and open rosettes drawn small and repeated with mirror symmetry across the long axis, so the eye reads the whole field as one continuous plant rather than a grid of repeats. The border system runs to 5 bands, with a wide main border of paired palmettes and leafy arabesques between narrow floral guard stripes and a fine reciprocal edge. Image 4 shows how cleanly the corners resolve, the border pattern turning without breaking the rhythm, which is the mark of a drawn cartoon rather than village improvisation.

A Palette of Dusty Red, Ivory and Navy Blue

The field is ivory turned the color of old parchment, warm rather than white, and it carries everything else. The medallion is dusty red, a deep rose that softens toward crimson at the outlines and lightens where the pile has been walked. Navy blue does the structural work, drawn in fine outlines around the blossoms and again in the dark guard stripes that frame the border. Between them sits the range this palette is famous for: salmon and antique pink in the palmettes, a chalky sky blue in the leaves and rosettes, pale celadon green at the medallion center, and tobacco brown in the vine stems. Because the individual motifs are small and the colors are muted, the rug reads at a distance as a single soft, faded blush and cream tone, then opens into dozens of separate shades up close. That is what makes it easy to live with under wood, painted plaster or a strong wall color.

Kerman Weaving and the Kermanshah Name

Kerman sits in southeastern Persia and has woven for the export and court markets longer than almost any other Persian city. Its weavers built their reputation on curvilinear drawing and on pictorial and garden borders, work that only holds together at a high knot count and with wool fine enough to take a curved line. Late 19th and early 20th century Kerman rugs of the highest grade were sold in the West under the name Kermanshah, and the label came to mean a particular combination: small scale floral drawing, a pale ground, a low silky pile and a very regular back. This rug carries those traits. If you want to understand the evidence that puts a piece like this in the antique class, our guide on how to date an Oriental rug walks through the same details we check: dye behavior, pile height, selvage construction and the handle of the foundation.