9'11" x 13'2" Persian Kashan Rug | Classic Floral Medallion | Red & Ivory | Excellent Condition

This is the classic room-size Kashan done properly: a deep madder red field, an ivory and indigo medallion floating dead center, and navy borders drawn with the kind of curved vine work that separates a workshop piece from a village copy. At 9'11" x 13'2" it is a true formal rug, wide enough to carry a large seating group or a 10 seat table with the chairs still on the wool. The pile is 3/8" hand-knotted wool on a cotton foundation, full and even across the whole field, with the soft sheen that good central Persian wool develops as it settles. If you have been comparing 10x13 Persian rugs, this one sits in the sweet spot of scale, drawing and condition, and the background on the type is covered in our Persian Kashan rug guide. Every rug we ship travels with a certificate of authenticity confirming origin, materials and hand-knotted construction.

Design and Motifs

The layout is the textbook Kashan formula, executed with real control. A lobed medallion sits at the center, indigo outlined in ivory, with an inner ivory cartouche holding a small blue rosette and paired leaves. Slender pendants reach out from the top and bottom of the medallion toward the ends of the field, each finished with a lantern shaped finial. Four navy spandrels close the corners, filled with ivory and pale green palmette clusters and curling cloudband tips, and the scalloped edge where each spandrel meets the red ground is drawn in a fine ivory outline. The field itself is not empty around the medallion: it carries a dense all-over pattern of curved vine, 8 petal rosettes, split palmettes, lanceolate leaves and tiny bud sprays that repeat in mirror across the long axis. The main border runs navy with an ivory arabesque vine linking alternating rosettes and palmettes, framed on both sides by narrow guard stripes of meandering vine and small blossoms, with a red ground stripe just inside the selvage.

Color: Madder Red, Ivory and Deep Indigo

The field is a warm madder red, closer to true crimson than to brick, with gentle tonal movement across the width that reads as depth rather than as a flaw. Against it, the ivory drawing does the heavy lifting: every vine, outline and rosette center is picked out in cream and bone white, which is what keeps a field this busy legible from across the room. Deep indigo anchors the medallion core, the spandrels and the main border, and a brighter sky blue appears inside the border palmettes and in the small flower heads scattered through the field. Rose pink and salmon soften the palmettes, a muted celadon green fills the corner leaf work, and touches of camel and gold warm the border rosettes. The close detail shots show how the tones layer: three or four blues, two reds and two whites working side by side, which is the mark of a workshop that dyed its yarn in small, careful lots.

Kashan: The Weaving Town and the Weave

Kashan lies in central Persia, north of Isfahan, and it is one of the few towns whose weaving reputation goes straight back to the Safavid court workshops. The local wool is soft and lustrous, which is why a Kashan pile takes light the way it does, and the town's drawing tradition is built on the balance you see here between a strong medallion and a fully filled field. It is also the Persian rug most people have already seen without knowing it: when you watch Shark Tank there is a Persian Kashan on the floor. The reverse of this piece shows a tight, regular knot structure on a cotton foundation, with straight rows and no crowding at the borders, and a rug 13'2" long only comes off the loom that evenly when the same trained weavers stay on it from start to finish. Handled on the floor, it feels dense and heavy for its pile height, and it remains in excellent condition with a full, unworn nap.