8' x 11'6" Oriental Rug | All Over Kashan Design | Wool with Touch of Silk | Made in Pakistan

This is a hand-knotted Oriental rug woven in Pakistan in the 2000's, in the classic Kashan drawing: a deep red field covered edge to edge in flowering vine, framed by a wide navy main border and three pale guard stripes. The pile is wool carried with a touch of silk, and you can see where the silk sits, in the highlights of the rosettes and the outlines of the leaves, which catch the light at a different angle than the wool around them. At 8' x 11'6" it is a true room size piece that sits comfortably in the same footprint as most 8x11 area rugs, with the extra half foot of length that squares it under a long sofa or a 10 seat table. Condition is perfect, with full pile, straight sides and clean cotton fringe, and the rug ships with a certificate of authenticity.

Design and Motifs

There is no central medallion here. Instead the weaver ran a continuous all over lattice of curling vine across the whole field, hanging large open rosettes, lobed palmettes and small 8 petal flower heads off it, with feathered sickle leaves filling the space between. The drawing mirrors cleanly on both axes, so the same rosette that anchors the center repeats in balanced rows out to the field edge, and the pattern reads as one piece rather than a grid of repeats. The main border carries big alternating palmettes and rounded flower heads on navy, connected by a thin vine, and it is fenced on both sides by a soft blue guard stripe of running arabesque and a narrow ivory meander stripe. The corners are resolved properly, with the border pattern turning the angle instead of being cut off, which is the detail that separates a carefully drawn cartoon from a rushed one. The ends finish in a woven red and navy checked band above hand-tied ivory fringe.

A Deep Red Field Against Navy and Ivory

The field is a saturated true red, closer to a cherry red than a brick or a rust, and it stays even from end to end with only the natural shift in tone you get when wool is viewed with the nap and against it. Over that red the florals are drawn in camel, ivory, cream and a pale dusty rose, with sage green leaves and small navy centers holding each rosette together. The main border flips the balance completely: an inky navy blue ground, nearly black in the photographs, with the same palmettes rendered in ivory, terracotta, camel and green, so the border frames the field rather than competing with it. Between field and border sits a light powder blue guard stripe that lifts the whole scheme and keeps the red and navy from reading heavy. Ivory shows up again in the outer stripe and in the fringe, and black outlining is used sparingly to define the vine. The silk content gives the lighter flowers a faint sheen, so the ivories and pale blues brighten noticeably as you walk around the rug.

Woven in Pakistan in the Kashan Tradition

Pakistan's weaving workshops have built their reputation on exactly this kind of work: fine, tightly knotted reproductions of classic city designs, woven on cotton foundations with good highland wool and, on the better pieces like this one, a percentage of silk worked into the highlights. The back shows a tight, regular knot with crisp definition on every flower head, which is what allows the drawing to stay this detailed at this scale, and the handle is firm without being stiff. Weavers there work from the same style of scaled cartoon used in the older city ateliers, and the quality control on selvages and fringe finishing is consistently strong, which is why so much of the world's best value in hand-knotted Oriental rugs now comes out of that region. For a buyer who wants the look of a formal city weave at room size, in perfect condition and with silk in the pile, this is a lot of rug for the money.