8'8" x 12'3" Persian Esfahan Rug | Wool and Silk | Red and Ivory

A hand-knotted carpet from Persia measuring 8'8" x 12'3", worked in wool and silk at a quarter-inch pile. The field is a rose-toned red carried edge to edge with flowering vinework, and at the centre sits an ivory medallion ringed in near-black navy. A wide navy border frames it, and at this size the rug covers a dining table with chairs pulled out or fills the seating area of a long room.

The design

The Esfahan drawing here is curvilinear throughout. A round-lobed centre medallion holds a small star rosette and radiating palmettes, with slim pendants reaching north and south into the field and dark cartouche-shaped anchors above and below them. The field around it is not left open: split-leaf vines, rosettes and cypress-like palmettes run in a mirrored all-over lattice right up to the corner spandrels, which are outlined in ivory and filled with the same vocabulary at reduced scale. The main border carries alternating palmettes and flower heads on a scrolling stem, flanked on each side by a narrow ivory guard band of reciprocal buds and a thin outer stripe. Selvedges are overcast in red and the ends finish in plain ivory fringe.

The colour

The ground is a cochineal-leaning red, cooler and pinker than madder, and it shifts noticeably with the nap: hot and clear where the light runs down the pile in the overhead shot, deeper and closer to claret where it runs against. Against it the ivory of the medallion, the spandrel outlines and the guard bands reads almost white in the silk-highlighted passages. The border is a blue so dark it passes for black at a distance and resolves into indigo up close. Through both field and border there are small quantities of soft rose, apricot, olive green, pale sky blue and a dull gold, each used in single flower heads rather than in blocks, which keeps the two-colour scheme of red and ivory dominant.

The making

Hand-knotted in Persia in wool with silk, the pile clipped short at a quarter of an inch, which is what lets the fine vine drawing hold its line. The reverse, shown with a rule laid across it, is tight and even, and the pattern reads clearly from the back. The shape is a straightforward rectangle at 8'8" by 12'3", and the condition is recorded as new and perfect, with full pile and intact ends and sides. More hand-knotted work is in the full collection.