9'1" x 12'5" Persian Isfahan Rug | All-Over Paisley Boteh on Beige | Signed, 1980s

This is a full room size piece from the 1980s, hand-knotted in wool on a cotton foundation and carrying a woven signature cartouche in the upper border, the mark of a workshop weaver rather than an anonymous commercial run. The drawing is classic Persian Isfahan: a beige field covered edge to edge in curling boteh, tied together by thin red vines and framed by 5 concentric bands. The pile is full and even across all 12 feet of length, the handle is supple, and the selvages and ivory fringe are intact. Every rug we ship leaves Freeport with a certificate of authenticity recording the origin, materials, weave and measurements of the exact piece you receive.

Design and Motifs

There is no medallion here. The weaver chose an all-over paisley design, hundreds of boteh leaning in alternating directions, each one filled with its own miniature garden of stems, buds and split leaves so that no two neighbors read exactly alike. Fine red vines run diagonally through the field and connect the boteh to small 8 petal rosettes, tulip heads and feathered lanceolate leaves. The border system is where the Isfahan discipline shows: a wide beige main band carrying large rose-red palmettes alternating with reversed boteh, an indigo secondary band of scrolling vine, and 3 narrow guard stripes of reciprocal trefoil and running flowerheads. The 4 corners resolve cleanly, with the palmette rhythm turning the angle instead of breaking at it, which is the detail that separates a drawn cartoon from a copied one.

A Beige Field Worked in Red, Indigo and Soft Green

The ground is a warm beige that shifts between sand and pale camel depending on the light and the nap direction, and it is the color that makes this rug easy to live with. Against it the weaver placed a rose-red that runs from a clear brick tone in the vines and palmettes to a softer coral in the small flowerheads, and a navy blue so deep that some boteh read almost black until you stand over them. Black is used sparingly, as outlining on the larger leaves and paisleys, which keeps the drawing crisp. The quieter colors carry the field: a muted sage green in the split leaves, and a chalky light blue that appears in flower centers and in the secondary border, cooling the red. The outer band and the finishing edge are a deeper red, so the whole rug is contained by a warm line.

Isfahan Weaving and the Quality of This Piece

Isfahan sits in central Persia and has been a court weaving center since the Safavid workshops of the 16th century. Its reputation rests entirely on drawing, on the curved line, the flowing vine and the precision of a repeated motif, and that kind of drawing only survives at a high knot count on a tight foundation. This example follows the tradition: wool pile on a cotton foundation, knotted fine enough to carry hundreds of individually detailed boteh across a 9 foot width without the pattern turning mushy, and finished with the narrow, tightly packed border stripes that Isfahan weavers use as a signature of control. The signed cartouche in the top border tells you a named workshop stood behind it, and the excellent condition of the pile after roughly 40 years says the wool was good to begin with.