9'10" x 13'2" Persian Kashan Rug | Ivory All Over Floral Field | Signed Kashan Ghotbi Cartouche

A signed piece is a workshop piece, and this one tells you so at the top of the field: a small ivory cartouche woven in navy script that reads "Kashan Ghotbi". The weaver put his name on it because the drawing is worth signing. The field is ivory rather than the usual red, which is the harder colorway to weave well, since nothing hides an uneven knot on a pale ground. At 9'10" x 13'2" it sits squarely in the 10 x 13 Persian rug class, hand-knotted in fine wool on a cotton foundation with a full, even 3/8" pile throughout. If you want the background on how these pieces are built, our guide to Persian Kashan rugs covers the tradition in detail. Every rug we sell ships with a certificate of authenticity.

Design and Motifs

The center holds a layered medallion built from scrolling arabesque cartouches around an 8 petal rosette, with a matching pendant above and below and quarter medallions answering in all 4 corners. What makes this piece unusual for the type is that the medallion does not sit on an open ground: the field around it is filled edge to edge with an all over lattice of palmettes, lanceolate leaves and small floral sprays on hair-thin vine work, so the medallion emerges from the pattern rather than interrupting it. The main border carries alternating palmettes and rosettes linked by a continuous vine, framed by 4 narrow guard stripes of running flower heads that keep the composition tight. Small paired bird and leaf forms appear in the inner guard, a detail you only catch up close.

A Study in Ivory, Navy and Soft Blue

The ground is a warm ivory with a faint cream cast, closer to unbleached silk than to white, and it carries the whole rug. Drawn over it is a navy outline so dark it reads almost black in the field photographs, used for the vine work and the contours of every palmette, which is what gives the pattern its crispness at a distance. Between those two poles sit the working colors: a pale powder blue that fills the larger leaf forms and the main border ground, a muted burgundy that punctuates the rosettes, olive and moss green in the smaller leaves, and small touches of soft gold, terracotta and pale pink in the flower centers. The overall effect in a room is light and neutral, a Persian rug that reads as a pale floor rather than a red one, with the color living in the detail instead of the ground.

Kashan, Central Persia, and the Quality of This Weave

Kashan lies in central Persia, north of Isfahan, and its workshops trace their formula back to the Safavid court looms: soft lustrous local wool, a dense cotton foundation, and curvilinear drawing that demands a high knot count to hold its line. It is also the most recognizable Persian rug in America, the one you see without registering it, so when you watch Shark Tank there is a Persian Kashan on the floor. The back of this rug, shown against a ruler in the last photograph, is fine and regular, with the knot nodes sitting in tight even rows and the design legible from the reverse, which is the honest test of a city weave. The pile is full and unworn, the selvedges are intact and the ends are secure, so the piece is ready to lay flat and be used.