9'10" x 13'2" Persian Kashan Rug | Red Field, Navy Lobed Medallion | Perfect Condition

This is the classic formula of a persian kashan rug worked at full room scale: a deep cherry red field, a navy lobed medallion with pendants above and below, ivory spandrels in all 4 corners, and a wide indigo main border carrying pink and ivory vinework. At 9'10" x 13'2" it is one of the most useful shapes we sell, wide enough to hold a long sofa and a pair of chairs without the furniture crowding the border, and it sits squarely among our 10x13 Persian rugs. The pile is wool on a cotton foundation, woven in the 2000's, so the wool is still full and the dyes are clean and unfaded. Every rug we sell ships with a certificate of authenticity confirming the origin, the materials and the hand-knotted construction.

Design and Motifs

The center holds a lobed navy medallion framed in olive and ivory outline, opening into an ivory cartouche with a sky blue rosette at its core, drawn around 4 small floral arms. Long stepped pendants run out from the top and bottom of the medallion, and a thin ivory tracery ring echoes the medallion shape out into the field. The field itself is a true all-over floral: curved vines link palmettes, split leaves, 8 petal rosettes and tiny blossoms, each one shaded across 3 or 4 tones so the drawing reads as movement rather than repetition. The 4 corner spandrels are ivory over sky blue, filled with their own vine and vase motifs, and the field is closed by a fine barberpole stripe. The main border is a navy ground with an ivory reciprocal vine carrying rose palmettes and red carnations, flanked on both sides by sky blue guard borders of alternating red and ivory flowerheads. The corners resolve cleanly, which is the mark of a workshop drawing rather than a village copy.

A Deep Cherry Red Field Against Indigo and Sky Blue

The field red is deep and slightly blue in tone, closer to cherry and cranberry than to orange or brick, and it reads warm under lamplight and richer under daylight. Against it the medallion and main border are a saturated indigo navy that pulls almost black in the shadows of the pile. Between those two heavyweights the weaver ran a band of clear sky blue in the guard borders and the spandrels, which is what keeps the rug from going dark. The florals are picked out in ivory, soft rose pink, olive and moss green, apricot, small touches of gold and the occasional bright orange stem, so from standing height the field looks like a red ground flecked with blue and cream, and up close it breaks into a dozen separate colors. The ivory cotton fringe and the red selvage finish it. It is a rug that works with wood floors, leather, brass and navy upholstery.

Kashan: Central Persia's Court Weaving Tradition

Kashan sits in central Persia, north of Isfahan, and its weaving pedigree runs back to the Safavid court workshops that produced some of the most important carpets ever made. The town kept that curvilinear, formal drawing style, and its local wool is famously soft and lustrous, which is why a Kashan pile takes light the way this one does. The red field, navy lobed medallion and ivory spandrels are the Kashan signature, so familiar that most people have seen it without knowing the name: when you watch Shark Tank there is a Persian Kashan on the floor. This example is a workshop piece on a tight cotton foundation, evenly knotted across nearly 13 feet of length with no drift in the medallion axis, and the back shows a fine regular grid with the design fully legible. Woven in the 2000's and never put into service, it has its full pile still standing, which means the buyer gets the first 30 years of its life rather than the last.