8'8" x 12'6" Persian Kashan Rug | Red Field, Navy Medallion | Signed Cartouche

A woven cartouche sits in the upper border of this Persian Kashan rug, the mark of a workshop that put its name on the piece rather than letting it leave anonymously. The rug measures 8'8" x 12'6" and is hand-knotted in wool on a cotton foundation with a 3/8" pile, dense and even from end to end. At this footprint it belongs with the more generous large Persian rugs we carry, sized to run a full seating group or a dining table with the chairs pulled back. It arrives with our certificate of authenticity.

Design and Motifs

The center holds a lobed navy medallion with stepped, serrated edges, opening into an ivory inner panel and a small sky blue rosette at the exact core. Slender pendants reach out above and below, each finishing in a hooked finial. Navy spandrels fill the 4 corners of the field, outlined in ivory and filled with the same palmette and leaf vocabulary. Around the medallion the red ground is worked as a true allover floral composition: curling vines, split palmettes, serrated lanceolate leaves and scattered rosettes, all drawn in the flowing curvilinear line that separates a workshop Kashan from a village copy. The navy main border carries a linked palmette and vine procession, framed on both sides by light blue guard stripes and narrow ivory minor bands, so the eye is handed inward in stages rather than all at once.

Reading the Color

The field is a deep cherry red with real warmth in it, closer to ripe tomato than to burgundy, and the lustrous Kashan wool takes light across the pile so the tone shifts slightly as you walk the room. Against it the borders and medallion run dark navy, almost inky where the two colors meet, which is what gives the drawing its crisp outline. Inside that framework the palette opens up: ivory in the medallion panel and the outlining, a clear sky blue in the guard stripes and rosette centers, rose pink and salmon in the flowerheads, soft sage green in the leaves, and small touches of gold ochre that keep the darker passages from going flat. Buyers looking across red Persian rugs will find this one on the vivid side rather than the muted side, and it sits well with dark wood, brass and cream walls.

Kashan Weaving and the Signed Cartouche

Kashan sits in central Persia, north of Isfahan, and its weaving goes back to the Safavid court workshops. The city's local wool is soft and unusually lustrous, and the classic Kashan formula of red field, navy lobed medallion and ivory spandrels is the design most Americans picture when they picture a Persian rug. When you watch Shark Tank there is a Persian Kashan on the floor. What separates one Kashan from the next is the knotting and the drawing, and the back of this piece shows fine, regular rows with no drift in the medallion axis, which is why the curved vine work stays smooth instead of stepping. The cartouche woven into the upper border names the weaver or workshop in Persian script, a signature reserved for pieces the weaver was willing to stand behind.