9'11" x 13'8" Persian Kerman Rug | Cream Boteh Paisley Field | Blue Star Medallion | Excellent Condition

This 9'11" x 13'8" Persian Kerman is the quiet, light-field version of a city weave that usually shouts. The ground is an even cream, almost uninterrupted between motifs, and the entire surface is covered with boteh paisleys and small flowering sprays drawn one at a time rather than stamped out on repeat. A soft light blue star medallion sits dead center, the only strong block of color in the field, and the four sides are closed by a wide ivory main border of leaning paisleys. The pile is fine wool on a cotton foundation, still full and even edge to edge, and the ends and sides are intact as shown in the back photograph. Condition is excellent. It ships with a certificate of authenticity, and it belongs in the group of large Persian rugs that can carry a full seating arrangement without the furniture crowding the border.

Design and Motifs

The drawing is an all-over boteh layout with a medallion laid on top of it, which is a harder composition to balance than a plain medallion field. Large paisleys, some 12 inches long, curve outward from the center in rings, each one filled with its own miniature garden of blossoms, leaf tips and tiny stems so that no two read the same at close range. Between them sit upright floral bouquets, vases and small flowering shrubs. The medallion is a multi point star in light blue, edged with a serrated outline and built around a red and ivory rosette core, with a ring of little paisleys facing inward toward that center. The main border repeats the paisley theme at a smaller scale, marching around all 4 sides, framed by narrow guard stripes of connected flower heads and leafy vine. The corner treatment resolves cleanly, with the diagonal spandrel lines meeting the border without the motif being chopped, which is the mark of a properly worked cartoon.

A Cream Field With Sky Blue, Rose and Sage

Cream is the dominant color and it does most of the work here, running from a pale buttermilk in the open field to a warmer ivory inside the border ground. Against it, the palette is deliberately soft: a chalky light blue in the medallion and scattered through the paisley fillings, a dusty rose red in the rosettes and outlines, sage and moss green in the leaves, and a camel to tan tone in the larger paisley bodies that keeps the whole surface warm rather than cold. There is no black and no heavy navy anywhere, so the rug reads light from across the room and only reveals how much color it holds when you stand over it, as the medallion close-up shows. That restraint is what makes it easy to live with: it sits comfortably with oak and walnut floors, cream and stone upholstery, brass and antique wood, and it will not fight artwork on the walls.

Kerman Weaving in Southeast Persia

Kerman sits in the southeast of Persia and has woven for the export and palace trade longer than almost any other Persian city, which is why its weavers are trained on curvilinear cartoons and pictorial garden borders rather than village geometry. The wool of the region is long stapled and takes dye softly, which suits exactly this kind of pale, tonal palette where a harsh dye would ruin the balance. Technically this is a workshop weave: an asymmetrical knot on a cotton warp and weft, multiple wefts between rows of knots for a firm flat handle, and a pile clipped low enough to hold the outline of every paisley tip. Look at the back photograph and the design comes through the foundation with real clarity, row after row lining up straight, which tells you the loom tension was held steady across the full 9'11" width. Among Persian Kerman rugs, a cream ground of this size that has stayed this clean is the harder one to find.