9'10" x 12'5" Persian Kashmar Rug | Pictorial Vase & Deer Field | Plum Red Khorasan Wool

This is a room size Persian Kashmar from the Khorasan province of northeast Persia, hand-knotted in wool on a cotton foundation and finished at a 3/8" pile that still stands full and even across the whole field. At 9'10" x 12'5" it covers a standard large living room or a dining table with all chairs pulled out, and it sits squarely in the group of 10x13 Persian rugs most American rooms are built for. What sets it apart from an ordinary medallion rug is the drawing: the plum red ground is filled with footed vases, ewers and flowering urns rather than plain vine work, and the navy corner spandrels hold deer and cypress trees. Every rug we ship leaves Freeport with a certificate of authenticity that records the origin, the materials and the exact measurements.

Design and Motifs

A small lobed medallion in ivory and camel sits at the center, outlined in dark navy and finished top and bottom with slender pendants. Around it the field is worked as a pictorial garden: tall necked ewers, wide footed vases, covered urns and shallow bowls, each drawn with its own pattern of rosettes and scrolls, spaced along curling vines and broad serrated leaves. The 4 corner spandrels drop into deep indigo and change subject entirely, showing deer and stags beneath cypress and blossoming trees, a hunting ground motif Khorasan weavers have used for generations. Two small cartouche panels carrying script sit against the indigo on each long side. The border system runs 5 bands deep: a wide indigo main border of palmettes and rosettes, flanked by camel and ivory guard stripes of leaf and bud, and narrow reciprocal edges that keep the whole frame tight and symmetrical. The detail photographs show how much of this drawing is built from single knot outlines, which is what gives the vases their crisp silhouettes at arm's length.

The Plum Red, Indigo and Brown Palette

The field is plum red with a cool raspberry undertone, a shade that reads warmer under lamplight and deeper in daylight, and it is the first thing you notice from across a room. Against it the weavers set two distinct blues: a saturated indigo used for the spandrels, the outer main border and the medallion outline, and a lighter sky blue reserved for the body of certain vases and for the fine reciprocal stripes. Brown does the structural work here, appearing as a dark coffee tone in the outer guard band and as a softer camel and tobacco in the vine work and the inner stripes. Ivory and cream lift the pattern, picking out blossoms, the medallion core and the running leaf bands, while touches of gold, olive green, teal and pale rose show up in the flower heads visible in the close-up photographs. The overall effect is rich rather than busy, because the palette is disciplined: one dominant red, two blues, a brown frame and small quantities of everything else.

Kashmar and the Weaving of Khorasan

Kashmar is a town in Khorasan, the northeastern province of Persia, roughly a half day southwest of the provincial capital. Its looms grew out of the same regional school that produced Persian Mashad rugs, sharing the curvilinear cartoons, the cotton foundation and the long lustrous Khorasan wool, but Kashmar built its own reputation on pictorial work: vases, gardens, trees and animals instead of a strict floral medallion. Our guide to Persian Mashad and Khorasan weaving explains how the province's workshops organized cartoon, dyeing and knotting. This example is a proper workshop piece rather than village work, judged by the regularity of the knotting across nearly 12 and a half feet of length, the straight selvages and the way the border turns the corners without the pattern breaking. The wool has the slight sheen Khorasan fleece is known for, the pile is even end to end with no low spots, and the rug lies flat with the weight you expect from a well-woven piece of this size.