9'10" x 15'4" Persian Kashan Rug | Signed Tiffany Blue Field | Never Used

This is a signed Kashan in a colour that Kashan almost never uses. Instead of the usual deep red field, the ground here is a soft Tiffany blue that leans towards pale teal green, and the entire classical drawing is laid over it in navy, cornflower and blush. The rug measures 9'10" x 15'4", hand-knotted in wool on a cotton foundation with a 3/8" pile, and it has never been on a floor. A woven cartouche sits at the top of the field, which tells you this came off a named workshop loom rather than an anonymous one. Because of the length and the pale palette, it reads best in a long formal room, and it belongs in the same conversation as other oversize Persian rugs that are bought once and kept. Every rug we ship carries a certificate of authenticity.

Design and Motifs

The layout is a textbook Kashan medallion plan drawn unusually lightly. At centre sits a small lobed medallion outlined in olive brown and filled with interlaced cartouches, tiny blossoms and a single red dot at its heart, ringed by a scalloped ivory halo studded with boteh-like buds. Above and below it, tall pendant vases rise on slender stems, echoed again by larger flower vases set into the four corners of the field and along the border. Around them, the whole ground is covered in curving flowering vines, feathery serrated leaves and small rosettes that fan outwards in mirrored pairs, so the eye reads movement rather than a rigid grid. The stepped spandrels are outlined in a fine rust line and filled with scrolling arabesques, which frames the open field and keeps the allover drawing from feeling busy. The main border carries alternating palmettes and vase bouquets between narrow floral guard stripes, with diamond corner cartouches finishing each end cleanly.

The Tiffany Blue Field and Its Palette

The field colour is the reason to buy this rug. It is a light Tiffany blue with a green cast, closer to pale teal or sea glass than to sky blue, and it shifts slightly with the light and with the direction of the pile. Against it, the vinework is worked in two clearly separated blues: a deep navy for the outlines, leaf tips and small flower heads, and a soft cornflower for the fills and the larger blossoms. Ivory does the structural work, lifting the halo around the medallion, the main border ground and the corner cartouches into a warm cream. Scattered through the field are small touches of blush pink and salmon on the bud tips and vase mouths, with olive green and a muted rust appearing in the outlines, the medallion frame and the fine border lines. There is no strong contrast anywhere, so the rug behaves like a light neutral in a room while still being unmistakably Persian in its detail. It sits comfortably with whites, greys, natural oak, brass and pale linen.

Kashan: Weaving Town and Weave Quality

Kashan lies in central Persia, north of Isfahan, and its looms trace back to the Safavid court workshops. The town built its name on soft, lustrous local wool and on disciplined curvilinear drawing, which is why Persian Kashan rugs became the default choice for formal rooms in the West. It is also the rug you see on the floor when you watch Shark Tank. The back of this piece, shown against the ruler, is even and tightly packed, with the knot rows running straight across the full 9'10" width and the design details holding crisply on the reverse, which is the honest test of a workshop weave at this scale. A 15'4" length means a single warp run of well over 4.5 metres kept in tension for months, and the fact that the medallion sits true and the borders meet correctly at the corners says the cartoon was followed by weavers who knew the format. The signature cartouche, woven in Persian script into the upper field, confirms it as a named loom piece.