9'10" x 13'11" Persian Mashad Rug | Ivory All Over Floral Field | Signed Cartouche, Excellent Condition

This 9'10" x 13'11" Persian Mashad is a workshop piece, and the woven cartouche in the upper border is the proof: a signed rug from Mashad was drawn on paper by a designer and knotted by contract weavers, not improvised at a village loom. The wool pile stands a full 3/8" over a cotton foundation, the handle is supple rather than stiff, and the drawing holds its symmetry cleanly from one end to the other, with the flowerheads on the left half answering the right half almost stitch for stitch. Colour is the first thing people notice: an ivory to soft taupe ground that photographs pale and reads warm in a room, with sky blue and brick red doing the heavy lifting in the pattern. At just under 10 by 14 it covers a large seating group without crowding it, which puts it squarely in the practical band of 10x14 Persian rugs. Condition is excellent, the fringe is original and untrimmed, and the rug ships with our certificate of authenticity.

Design and Motifs

The centre is a tight rosette: a single crimson flowerhead inside a ring of 8 petals, wrapped in sky blue lotus forms and a taupe and navy star frame, from which pointed palmettes radiate outward like rays. Around it the field opens into an all over floral design of curling arabesque vines, split palmettes, serrated saz leaves, pomegranate buds and small paired blossoms, drawn in a fluid curvilinear line that never repeats in an obvious grid. Faint spandrels are suggested at the 4 corners rather than blocked in, so the eye reads one continuous garden from border to border. The main border carries a procession of large palmettes and scrolling vinework on a soft taupe ground, flanked inside and out by narrow guard stripes of meandering vine with alternating rose and cream flowerheads, and the outermost stripe adds a fine lavender and blue zigzag that frames the whole piece. The signature cartouche breaks the inner border at the top, a small ivory panel of dark Persian script that the designer set deliberately into the vinery.

The Ivory Ground and Its Blues, Reds and Lavenders

The ground is ivory with a warm taupe cast, closer to unbleached linen than to white, and it shifts with the light: paler where the pile leans toward you, deeper mushroom where it leans away. Over that ground the palette is layered rather than loud. Sky blue and pale cornflower carry the vine scrolls and give the field its cool, airy feel, while deep navy outlines the palmettes and anchors the drawing so nothing floats. Brick red and a slightly cooler cherry red mark the blossoms and the small border flowerheads, with dusty rose and soft peach filling the transitions. A muted lavender runs through the guard stripes and through some of the larger flowers, an unusual accent that gives this rug its particular character, and small hits of olive green and old gold appear in the leaf tips and border medallions. Read as a whole it is an ivory rug with blue and red movement, which is why it sits comfortably with both warm wood tones and cooler grey and white interiors.

Mashad, Khorasan, and the Weave Behind It

Mashad is the great weaving city of Khorasan in northeast Persia, a pilgrimage centre whose workshops built their reputation on large formal room sizes with a soft, long-stapled local wool that takes dye beautifully and keeps its sheen for decades. That wool is exactly what you see here in the quiet lustre of the pile. The best Persian Mashad rugs are signed by the atelier that produced them, and a signature raises a rug out of the general trade and ties it to a specific master's cartoon and a specific standard of finishing. The reverse view shows the reason this piece drapes and lies flat the way it does: even rows, tight and regular knotting on a cotton warp, and no slubs or wandering lines across the width. Corners are square, selvedges are intact, and the pile depth is consistent from end to end, which on a room-size rug of nearly 14 feet is the real mark of disciplined loom work.