9'10" x 12'10" Persian Kashmar Rug | Navy Vase and Bird Pictorial | Signed Cartouche

Signed in the field and woven in the Khorasan town of Kashmar, this 9'10" x 12'10" Persian rug is the dense, story-filled workshop weaving that Kashmar built its name on: a near-black navy ground crowded with lidded flower vases, long-tailed birds and blossoming vine, all gathered around a sky blue medallion. The pile is 3/8" wool on a cotton foundation, still full and even from end to end, and the condition grades excellent with no repair and no restoration. Among 10x13 Persian rugs this is the practical end of the scale, wide enough to carry a full seating group or a 10 seat dining table with the chairs pulled back. Every rug we ship leaves with a certificate of authenticity recording origin, materials, weave and measurements.

Design and Motifs

The center holds a layered pointed medallion: a small navy core with an 8 petal rosette, wrapped in ivory and blush scrolling arms, set on a sky blue panel finely cross-hatched behind the drawing, then edged in deep red serrated leafwork. Out from there the field turns pictorial rather than purely floral. Footed vases with domed lids sit in pairs down the long axis, birds with spotted plumage and long tails perch and fly through the vine, and blush-ground cartouches carry rosettes and slender cypress-like sprays. One of those cartouches is the weaver's signature, drawn in dark script on an ivory panel and framed in olive, red and blue (see the close-up photograph). The corner spandrels repeat the blush and ivory palmette groups, and the wide main border runs a procession of large boteh, each one filled with its own rosettes and leaf sprays and separated by red and navy grounds, held between narrow ivory guard stripes and a slim vine minor border.

A Navy Field Lit by Sky Blue, Red and Blush

The ground is a deep midnight navy that reads almost black in low light and opens into true indigo under a lamp, which is exactly why the rest of the palette registers so clearly. The medallion panel is a distinctly lighter sky blue, the only large area of it in the rug, so the eye goes straight to the center. Deep madder red drives the main border and the serrated leaves of the medallion, while blush and salmon pink soften the spandrels, the cartouches and the vase bodies. Ivory does the outlining work: hairline guard stripes, the scrolling arms of the medallion, the small stars scattered through the field. Saffron gold, olive green and a few dots of teal appear in the smaller blossoms and in the border boteh, enough to keep the whole surface warm. Buyers shopping navy blue Persian rugs for a room with dark wood or a heavy library palette will find this one grounds a space without going flat.

Kashmar and the Khorasan Weaving Tradition

Kashmar lies southwest of Mashad in Khorasan, northeast Persia, and it weaves in the Khorasan manner: Persian knot, cotton warp, long-staple local wool, and designs drawn from full cartoons rather than memory, which is what allows the vase and bird scenes here to stay symmetrical across almost 13 feet. The town's reputation came from exactly this type of pictorial and vase-panel work, and pieces of this weight were destined for formal rooms from the start. A woven signature cartouche is the tell that this is workshop rather than village production, since only a named atelier puts its mark in the field. If you want the background on the wider group, read our Persian Mashad rugs guide, and compare this one against the other Khorasan and Mashad rugs we currently have on the floor.