9'10" x 13'11" Persian Kashan Rug | Navy Field, Red Border, Floral Medallion | Fine Wool Pile

This is the classic city formula worked in reverse: instead of a red ground, the weaver gave this Persian Kashan rug a deep navy field and saved the red for the wide main border, so the medallion reads like a lit window in a dark wall. It measures 9'10" x 13'11", a true room size that covers a seating group without crowding the walls, and the wool pile still has its full body and sheen across the whole surface. The drawing is dense and even end to end, the selvages are tight, and the fringes are original. Every rug we ship leaves Freeport with a certificate of authenticity confirming it is hand-knotted in Persia.

Design and Motifs

At the center sits a lobed medallion built in concentric rings, an ivory rosette core, a red inner ground packed with small blossoms, and an ivory arabesque outline that throws out pendants and split-leaf tendrils at the top and bottom. The navy field around it is not left open: it is filled edge to edge with an all-over lattice of palmettes, serrated leaves and curling vine, with small rosettes tucked into every gap so the ground never goes flat. The 4 corner spandrels repeat the medallion's ivory scrollwork in mirror image, a device that keeps the eye circling back to the middle. The main border carries a rhythmic run of palmettes and cypress-like leaf forms on red, and it is flanked by 4 narrow guard stripes of light blue and ivory meander, the kind of layered framing that separates a workshop Kashan from a village copy.

The Navy and Red Color Story

The field is a deep indigo navy that shifts toward near-black in low light and opens up to true blue where the pile catches the sun, as the angled photographs show. Against it the palette is unusually broad for a Kashan: brick and tomato red in the flowerheads, clean ivory in the vine work and medallion core, soft rose and salmon pink in the smaller blossoms, pale sky blue in the guard stripes and scattered leaves, plus touches of olive green and old gold in the stems. The main border is a warm true red, slightly brighter than the reds inside the field, which is what gives the rug its strong frame from across a room. There is no bleeding and no harsh synthetic note anywhere in the coloring, and the ivory has aged to a soft cream rather than a stark white, so the whole surface sits comfortably with both dark wood and painted floors.

Kashan, Central Persia, and the Weave

Kashan lies in central Persia, north of Isfahan, and its workshops trace their drawing straight back to the Safavid court ateliers of the 16th century. The town's weavers work on a cotton foundation with soft, lustrous local wool, and they are known for curvilinear designs that hold their line at scale, which matters enormously on a piece this large: a 9'10" x 13'11" field gives the drawing nowhere to hide, and here the medallion is centered, the borders turn cleanly at all 4 corners, and the repeat stays honest from one end to the other. Kashan is also the rug most Americans have already seen without knowing it, since when you watch Shark Tank there is a Persian Kashan on the floor. If you are shopping the 10x14 Persian rug range, this one earns its place on weave quality and on a navy ground that is far less common than the standard red.