9'10" x 14'1" Persian Kashan Rug | Navy Field, Red Lobed Medallion | Excellent Condition

This is a full room size Persian Kashan rug measuring 9'10" x 14'1", hand-knotted in wool on a cotton foundation and finished with a 3/8" pile that still stands full and even across the whole field. The drawing is the classical Kashan formula reversed: instead of the usual red ground, the weaver set the flowering field on deep navy blue and reserved the brick red for the medallion, the corner spandrels and the wide main border, which gives the rug far more depth underfoot than the standard colorway. Condition is excellent throughout, with clean sides, straight ends and no repairs visible in the photographs. It ships with a certificate of authenticity confirming the origin, the materials and the hand-knotted construction. At 14 feet long it settles naturally into the popular 10 x 14 Persian rug footprint.

Design and Motifs

The center holds a lobed red medallion with a small teal cartouche at its heart, that cartouche carrying an 8 petal rosette ringed by tiny serrated leaves. Ivory arabesques curl out of the medallion in both directions and finish in the pendant finials that point up and down the long axis. Around all of it the navy field is packed with a continuous vine: palmettes, split leaves, tulip heads and small rosettes, each one outlined so it reads clearly against the dark ground rather than dissolving into it. The 4 corner spandrels repeat the same red and ivory vocabulary in quarter form, which is the detail that ties a classical Kashan drawing together. The border system runs to 7 bands in total, a broad red main stripe of alternating palmettes and curling leaves, flanked by narrow ivory and teal guard stripes and an outer meander of small blossoms. Symmetry is held tightly from end to end, the sign of a drawn cartoon followed carefully rather than a village weaver improvising.

A Navy Blue Field Against Brick Red and Ivory

The ground is a deep navy blue that reads almost inky in the overall photographs and opens up into a clearer mid blue in the close detail shots, depending on the angle of the light and the direction of the pile. Against it the medallion and border sit in a warm brick red with a faint rust cast, softened rather than bright, the kind of tone that comes from well washed madder based dyeing. Ivory does the structural work: it outlines the medallion, lights the arabesques, and separates each border band so the eye can follow the pattern. Scattered through the vine work are secondary tones that lift the whole piece, a soft teal blue in rosette centers, an olive to sage green in the leaves, and small touches of gold and pale peach in individual flower heads. Because the field is dark and the border is warm, this rug grounds a light floor and pale walls without going cold, and the red carries enough age softened warmth to sit beside wood tones and leather.

Kashan, Central Persia

Kashan lies in central Persia, north of Isfahan, and its looms trace back to the Safavid court workshops that set the standard for classical Persian weaving. The town is known for two things: soft, lustrous local wool that takes dye deeply and holds its sheen for generations, and a disciplined city weave that keeps the curved line of a medallion perfectly true over a 14 foot length. That discipline is what you are looking at here, in the even knotting across the width and in the way the vine scroll stays in register from one end to the other. Kashan is also the most recognizable Persian design in America: when you watch Shark Tank there is a Persian Kashan on the floor. A piece at this size and in this condition is a once bought, long kept purchase, and the navy ground version is considerably harder to find than the familiar red field.