8'8" x 11'6" Persian Mashad Rug | Signed Khorasan Floral Medallion | 1980s Wool

This is a workshop piece from the 1980s, carrying a small woven cartouche in the border, which is how the better Persian Mashad rugs were marked by the master who set up the loom. At 8'8" x 11'6" it sits squarely in the most useful of all room sizes, so if you have been looking at 9x12 Persian rugs for a main living area, this one fills that footprint with a little room to spare at the walls. The pile is hand-knotted wool on a cotton foundation, still full and lustrous after four decades, and the ivory wool fringe and red selvage are intact on all 4 sides with no restoration. Condition is excellent and the rug ships with a certificate of authenticity.

Design and Motifs

The drawing is the classic Khorasan medallion and corner layout, worked in curved line rather than village angles. At the center sits an 8 petal rosette in burnt orange and mid blue, ringed by an ivory outline and set on a navy ground that radiates outward into long serrated leaves and lotus palmettes. Four corner spandrels in the same navy repeat the pattern on a smaller scale, each one closed off by a sage and ivory panel with an orange cartouche at its tip. Between medallion and spandrels the red field is filled edge to edge with flowering vines, cypress sprays, split palmettes, rosettes and large curled boteh paisleys, all strung on thin cobalt stems so the eye keeps moving instead of settling. The main border is a navy ground carrying alternating palmettes and feathered paisley forms, framed by ivory guard stripes of small vine and blossom work and a slim blue minor band on either side. Nothing in the field is mirrored lazily; the small flower heads change color from one repeat to the next.

Burgundy Field, Navy Borders and Ivory Guard Stripes

The ground is a deep burgundy red with a cool raspberry cast, the kind of red that photographs dark and lightens the moment the pile is brushed the other way, which you can see clearly in the folded close-up. Against it the borders and medallion field go almost black navy, with the medallion core lifting in burnt orange and two clear blues, a bright cerulean and a deeper indigo. The secondary palette is wide for a single rug: olive and sage green in the leaves, soft rose pink in the small flower heads, caramel and gold brown in the paisleys, chalky ivory in the blossoms and guard stripes, with tiny flicks of saffron yellow along the vine work. The ivory is a natural undyed cream rather than a bleached white, which keeps the whole scheme warm. Burgundy, navy and ivory in this balance read as formal without going cold, and the green and gold accents give it something to talk to in a room with wood furniture or brass.

Mashad and the Weaving of Khorasan

Mashad is the great weaving city of Khorasan in northeast Persia, a pilgrimage center whose workshops supplied large formal rugs to patrons across the country. Khorasan wool is long stapled and takes dye deeply, which is why Mashad reds hold their saturation for generations and why the pile here still has a glassy sheen after 40 years of age. A signed piece from Mashad means a workshop piece: the design was drawn on paper, the loom was dressed by a master, and the weavers followed a cartoon rather than improvising, which is what allows the curved vines and the perfectly round rosette center you see in the detail shots. The back shows a tight, even knot line with no wandering rows, and the fringe and selvages have never been rebuilt. If you want to understand how a rug like this is placed in time, our guide on how to date an oriental rug walks through the same evidence we used here.