9'10" x 16' Persian Kashan Rug | Wool | Navy Blue

A hand-knotted Kashan from Persia, woven in wool with a 3/8" pile and measuring 9'10" x 16'. The field is a deep navy carrying dense floral scrollwork from edge to edge, with an ivory medallion at the centre set on a red ground and a broad red main border framing the whole. At a distance the rug reads as dark blue and red; up close the field breaks into hundreds of small blossoms in rose, sky blue, gold and ivory. The table records the condition as New Perfect.

The design

The centre holds a lobed ivory medallion filled with a small red rosette and fine blue tracery, sitting inside a larger red cartouche-shaped ground that carries its own palmettes and curling leaves. Stepped pendants run off the medallion along the long axis, and matching ivory and red spandrels fill the four corners of the field, each one edged with a serrated outline so the navy ground shows through as a silhouette. Between them the field is covered in a continuous vine of palmettes, cypress-like leaves and small paired blossoms, drawn small and repeated closely rather than left open. The main border is red, with a meander of large palmettes and rosettes, and it is flanked on both sides by pale blue and ivory guard stripes of linked flowerheads. One border cartouche carries a woven inscription in Persian script on a green and cream ground, visible in the close photograph.

The colour

The ground is a saturated navy blue, dark enough that the drawing on it has to work in light colours to be read. Against it sits madder red, warm and slightly brick where the light crosses the pile, used for the medallion ground, the corners and the main border. The third colour is ivory, which outlines the medallion and the guard stripes and keeps the two heavy tones apart. Scattered through the field are pale sky blue, soft rose, mustard gold and a muted olive green, each in small quantities, and it is these that give the navy its depth rather than any change in the ground itself.

The making

Hand-knotted in Persia in the Kashan manner, with a 3/8" pile of wool that takes the red and navy cleanly and holds the fine outlining the drawing depends on. The back, shown against a ruler in the last photograph, is even and tightly packed, with the pattern legible knot by knot. It is a rectangular piece at 9'10" wide by 16' long, large enough for a long dining room or a hall, and one of the bigger sizes among the hand-knotted rugs here.