9'10" x 12'11" Persian Kashan Rug | Ivory Field with Blue Floral Vines | Signed Cartouche

Most Kashans come to market on a red ground, which is exactly why this one stops people. The field is ivory, the drawing is carried in blues and coffee brown, and the whole 9'10" x 12'11" surface reads light instead of heavy. It is hand-knotted in wool on a cotton foundation with a 3/8" pile, the weaver signed it in a small cartouche woven into the end border, and the condition is excellent with even pile from edge to edge. Buyers comparing Persian Kashan rugs at this scale will recognize it as a proper workshop piece rather than a village copy, and it ships with a certificate of authenticity confirming origin, materials and hand-knotted construction.

Design and Motifs

The layout is the classic Kashan formula drawn in reverse tonality: a lobed central medallion with a small pendant at each end, quarter medallion spandrels at the 4 corners, and a field filled with curling vine scroll, palmettes and rosettes that never repeats itself twice in the same way. The medallion is outlined in indigo with a curled hook finial at each shoulder, and its interior carries an 8 petal rosette at the center surrounded by brown palmettes and sky blue blossoms. Around it the vinework runs shoulder to shoulder, tying every blossom back into a continuous stem, which is the drawing discipline that separates a city Kashan from a loosely copied design. The border system is generous: a wide main band of alternating palmettes and turning leaves, flanked by paired floral guard stripes and a fine outer meander, with the signature cartouche set into one end so it reads right side up when the rug is laid down.

A Palette Built on Ivory, Indigo and Sky Blue

The ground is a soft ivory with a faint cream warmth, and the medallion interior sits a shade lighter still, almost oyster, so it lifts away from the field without any hard color break. Everything drawn on top works in two registers of blue: a deep indigo used for outlines, stems and the medallion contour, and a clear sky blue used for the open blossoms, which is what gives the rug its cool, airy read from across a room. Coffee brown fills the larger palmettes and leaf heads and supplies the visual weight that keeps a pale rug from looking washed out, while small sage green leaves and pinhead touches of brick red appear inside the flower centers and along the guard stripes. The main border shifts to a pale silvery blue ground, a smart choice that frames the ivory field rather than boxing it in. With a light-reflecting wool pile at 3/8", the palette shifts gently as you walk around it, silvery from one end and warmer ivory from the other.

Kashan: Weaving Town and Weave Quality

Kashan sits in central Persia north of Isfahan and has been a weaving center since the Safavid court workshops, which is why the town's rugs still follow a drafted cartoon, a tight symmetrical knot and the soft lustrous local wool that ages into a sheen instead of going dull. It is also the design most Americans have seen without knowing its name: when you watch Shark Tank there is a Persian Kashan on the floor. This example shows the traits that matter on the back and the edges, a fine even knot across the width, straight sides, a level handle and no pull in the corners after a full room-size weave, and the fact that a weaver put a signature cartouche on it tells you it left a workshop rather than a home loom. At just under 10 by 13 it is a true room-size piece, so it belongs with the 10x13 Persian rugs a buyer looks at when the furniture has to sit fully on the rug.