8'8" x 11'7" Persian Kashan Rug | 1940s Floral Medallion | Antique Low Pile Dense Wool

This is a genuine 1940s room-size piece from central Persia, 8'8" x 11'7" of hand-knotted wool that has been walked on, cared for and kept intact for roughly eighty years. The pile has settled to about 1/4" and lies dense and even across the whole field, which is exactly what you want to see in an antique of this age: low, tight and still full, with the drawing as legible today as the day it came off the loom. Reds have mellowed into a warm rustic terracotta, and the wool carries the soft sheen that only decades of use give. Anyone who has looked at Persian Kashan rugs will recognise the formula immediately. It ships with a certificate of authenticity documenting origin, age, materials and knotting.

Design and Motifs

A pointed navy medallion sits dead centre, filled with an ivory inner cartouche of tiny rosettes and palmettes and finished top and bottom with slender pendants. Around it the field is packed edge to edge with curling vinework, lanceolate leaves, blossoming palmettes and small 8 petal rosettes, drawn in the curvilinear style rather than the angular village manner. The 4 corners carry ivory spandrels of the same floral vocabulary, so the eye reads the medallion and the corner work as one composition. The main border runs large palmettes and rosettes on a deep navy ground, flanked by matching guard stripes of reversing vine and small flowerheads, and a final narrow outer stripe keeps the whole thing squared off. The corners resolve cleanly, which tells you the weaver was following a proper cartoon and counting carefully.

A Rustic Red Field with Navy, Light Blue, Green and Ivory

The ground is a rustic terracotta red that shifts with the light, reading brick and brighter where the pile leans one way, deeper and more oxblood where it leans the other. Against it the palette is mostly cool: a strong indigo navy in the medallion, spandrel outlines and main border, plus a lighter turquoise blue that lifts the smaller flowerheads and the guard stripes. Soft sage and olive greens appear in the leaves, warm gold and saffron light up the border palmettes, and undyed ivory carries the spandrels, the medallion centre and the fine outlines that separate every motif from its neighbour. Touches of rose and salmon soften the transitions. Nothing here is harsh or synthetic looking; the colours have aged together, which is the main reason a 1940s Kashan sits so comfortably in a modern room.

Kashan: The Town and the Weave

Kashan lies in central Persia north of Isfahan and has been weaving to court workshop standards since the Safavid period, using soft lustrous local wool on a cotton foundation. The classic Kashan formula of a red field, a lobed navy medallion and ivory spandrels was set there and copied everywhere since; when you watch Shark Tank there is a Persian Kashan on the floor. This example is town work rather than village work, and the back shows it: fine, regular, tightly packed knots with crisp definition on every stem and petal, the level of control that lets a weaver draw a true curve. The low even pile, the mellowed dyes and the tightly woven cotton warps all help date an oriental rug to the 1940s, and at this scale it belongs with other 9x12 Persian rugs that anchor a full seating group without crowding the walls.