9'10" x 13'4" Persian Kashan Rug | Dark Maroon Medallion Field | Signed Cartouche

This is a full room size workshop piece, hand-knotted in central Persia with a cotton foundation and a dense, fine wool pile that still carries a low sheen across the dark maroon ground. The drawing is classic Persian Kashan work: one lobed navy medallion at dead center, ivory quarter spandrels at the 4 corners, and a wide navy main border carrying palmettes and turning vines. A small woven cartouche sits in one of the guard borders, the mark of a named workshop rather than an anonymous village loom. At 9'10" x 13'4" it belongs with the true room size pieces, and buyers shopping 10x13 Persian rugs will find it sits under a 10 foot dining table or anchors a large seating group without crowding the walls. Condition is excellent, with even pile and clean, straight sides, and the rug ships with a certificate of authenticity.

Design and Motifs

The center holds a stepped, lobed navy medallion built in layers: an ivory inner cartouche, then a small light blue rosette panel at the very core, then a ring of red and blue blossoms that radiate out to hooked navy outlines. Above and below, two pendant finials in the same navy reach into the field, each filled with its own miniature bouquet. The field itself is never empty. Curling vines carry rosettes, serrated leaves and small palmettes in an even all-over rhythm, drawn in the curvilinear line that separates a town workshop from tribal weaving. The 4 corner spandrels are ivory, densely filled with light blue and rose flowering branches, so the corners read light while the middle reads deep. Around all of it runs a wide navy main border of alternating palmettes and rosettes on a turning vine, flanked by pale guard stripes on a light blue and ivory ground. The signature cartouche breaks that guard stripe on one side, with green and grey wool picked out against the blue, a detail worth looking at closely in the border photograph.

The Dark Maroon Palette

The field is a dark maroon, a deep madder red that shifts toward crimson where the light hits the pile straight on and toward oxblood where the nap runs away from you. It is the anchor colour of the rug, and everything else is set against it. The medallion, spandrel outlines and main border are a very dark inky navy, almost black at a distance, which is what gives the rug its weight in a room. Inside those navy areas the weaver used a full painter's palette at small scale: chalk ivory, powder and cornflower blue, soft rose, ochre gold, olive and bottle green, plus touches of rust and brown in the leaves. The ivory corners and the ivory ring around the medallion do the lifting, pulling the eye through the darkness. Against warm oak, walnut or a cream wall this reads rich and formal rather than heavy, and the flecks of light blue keep it from ever looking flat.

Kashan Weaving and Quality

Kashan sits in central Persia, north of Isfahan, and its looms trace back to the Safavid court workshops. The town built its name on two things: soft, lustrous local wool that takes dye deeply and holds a sheen for decades, and the classic formula of a red field, a navy lobed medallion and ivory spandrels, which is exactly the formula on this piece. When you watch Shark Tank there is a Persian Kashan on the floor, which is why so many buyers recognise the layout before they know the name. The reverse photograph shows the knot structure clearly, with tight, regular rows on a cotton warp and weft, the kind of compact handle that lets a rug this size take daily traffic under a dining table for generations. The signed cartouche places it with a workshop that was willing to put its name on the work, and the even pile and unworn ends say it has been looked after since it came off the loom.