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

This is the classic city formula turned inside out: instead of the usual red ground, this Persian Kashan rug lays its flower work over an inky navy blue field and saves the madder red for the medallion and the wide main border. The wool is the soft, high lustre kind Kashan is known for, hand-knotted on a cotton foundation with a 3/8" pile that still stands full and even edge to edge. At 9'10" x 14' it covers a large formal room properly, with room for all four legs of a sofa group or a 10 seat dining table, and it is one of the more useful sizes we carry among 10x14 Persian rugs. Every rug we ship leaves Freeport with a certificate of authenticity recording origin, materials and measurements.

Design and Motifs

The drawing is fully curvilinear, with no straight line anywhere in the field. A stepped lobed medallion sits dead center, built in concentric layers: an ivory frame, a red cusped outline, and a small rosette at the core surrounded by a ring of leaves and blossoms. Slender pendants run off the top and bottom points. Around it the navy field is filled with a continuous vine that carries palmettes, cypress buds, serrated leaves and small multi-petal rosettes, each one detailed enough that you can pick out the individual flower heads in the close up photograph. Ivory spandrels close the 4 corners of the field and repeat the medallion's flowerwork in miniature. The wide main border runs a turning vine with alternating palmettes and rosettes, and it is held by several narrow guard stripes, the innermost carrying a small repeating blossom on a pale ground that keeps the border from crowding the field.

Navy Ground, Madder Red Border, Ivory Relief

The field is a deep navy blue that reads almost black under low light and opens up to true indigo in daylight, which is exactly what makes the pale flowers on it glow. The border is a rich madder red, warm rather than orange, and it is this red that also fills the body of the medallion so the two ends of the rug speak to each other. Ivory does the relief work: the medallion frame, the corner spandrels, the vine stems in the border and the outermost guard stripe. Look closer and the palette widens considerably. There is a soft celadon green in the medallion center and in the guard stripes, a chalky sky blue in the small border blossoms, and touches of rose, apricot and old gold scattered through the vine. Cream cotton fringe finishes both ends. The combination suits dark wood, brass and deep upholstery, and the navy ground is far more forgiving of daily traffic than an all red field.

Kashan: Central Persia's Court Weaving City

Kashan sits in central Persia north of Isfahan and has been weaving since the Safavid court workshops of the 16th century, which is why its rugs follow drawn cartoons rather than village memory: the medallion is symmetrical, the vines close properly, and the borders turn cleanly at every corner. Local wool is soft and unusually lustrous, and Kashan weavers clip it at a medium height so the pile holds its sheen without losing definition in the flower heads. This piece is a genuine town weave, tight and regular on the reverse, with good enough resolution to carry the fine leaf tips and outlined petals you see in the detail shots. Kashan is also the design most Americans have already seen without knowing its name: when you watch Shark Tank there is a Persian Kashan on the floor. This one is the same tradition, in the less common navy colorway and in a full 9'10" x 14' room size.