9'10" x 12'11" Persian Kashan Rug | Signed Ivory Floral Medallion | Excellent Condition

A signed workshop piece is a different animal from an anonymous village rug, and this Persian Kashan rug carries its weaver's cartouche openly in the upper border. The drawing holds together across almost 13 feet: the medallion sits true on both axes, the corner spandrels mirror each other cleanly, and the pile is full and even end to end with no thin spots or restoration. At 9'10" wide it fills a formal room without a squeeze, which is exactly why 10x13 Persian rugs in good ivory ground are the hardest size and color combination to find in one piece. Every rug we sell ships with a certificate of authenticity confirming origin, materials and hand-knotted construction.

Design and Motifs

The center is a layered star medallion, an inner rosette ringed by 8 lobes of scrolling arabesque, opening into a soft pale halo that radiates outward like light on water. From that halo the field runs into a dense allover system of curling vines, serrated leaves, palmettes and small rosettes, every stem resolving into a blossom rather than trailing off. Quarter versions of the medallion anchor the 4 corners, so the composition reads correctly whether you stand at the end or the side. The border scheme is deep: a wide main band of alternating palmettes and cloud bands flanked by several narrow guard stripes of running vine, with a final outer stripe of tiny meandering flowerheads. The signature cartouche breaks the top border at the midpoint, framed in pale blue with a single red floral finial above it, the mark of a named workshop rather than a commercial run.

Ivory Ground with Blue and Burgundy Detail

The field is ivory leaning to warm cream, the kind of ground that lifts a dark room instead of absorbing it. Against it the palette is disciplined: indigo and mid blue carry the outlines and the leaf work, with a lighter powder blue used for the arabesque tracery inside the medallion so the center reads as two tones of blue rather than one. Deep burgundy and oxblood punctuate the palmettes at regular intervals, olive and moss green fill the small serrated leaves, and scattered touches of rose, pale aqua and apricot appear in the smaller flowerheads, visible only up close. The medallion halo itself is a soft grey-lilac, a quiet transition between the ivory field and the saturated blues. The overall effect is light, cool and formal, and it works equally well over dark hardwood or a pale stone floor.

Kashan: The Town and the Weave

Kashan sits in central Persia north of Isfahan and has been a weaving center since the Safavid court workshops of the 16th century. The town is known for soft, lustrous local wool and for a house formula built around a lobed central medallion, matching spandrels and a palmette border, usually on red. An ivory-ground Kashan of this scale is the less common and more sought after version of that formula. The weave here is tight and regular, the knotting fine enough to hold the curved outlines of the arabesque without stepping, and the 3/8" wool pile has the slight sheen good Kashan fleece develops with age. If you watch Shark Tank, there is a Persian Kashan on the floor, which is how most Americans have seen this design without knowing its name.