9'11" x 14'9" Persian Najafabad Isfahan Design Rug | Red Field, Navy Floral Border | 1980s, Perfect Condition

This is a large 1980s workshop piece from Najafabad, the weaving town just west of Isfahan that has built its reputation on drawing the classic Isfahan repertoire in sturdy, long-wearing wool. The rug measures 9'11" x 14'9", a true room-filling format that sits comfortably in the family of oversize Persian rugs without tipping into unmanageable palace proportions. The pile measures 3/8" and stands full and even from end to end, with no thin areas, no repairs and no discoloration, which is why it is graded perfect rather than simply very good. For anyone comparing this drawing against city workshop pieces, our guide to Persian Isfahan rugs lays out what separates the various grades. Every rug we ship travels with its certificate of authenticity.

Design and Motifs

The center holds a layered star medallion: an ivory and gold core built around a small red and blue rosette, ringed by an indigo band of stylized blossoms, then finished with pale blue and turquoise petal lobes that radiate outward like a compass. Anchor pendants extend from the top and bottom of the medallion into the open field. Around all of it runs a dense all-over lattice of curved vines carrying palmettes, split leaves and open rosettes, drawn small and repeated with real discipline so the field reads as continuous garden rather than scattered filler. The 4 corners carry gold spandrels filled with the same vocabulary at a slightly larger scale, which is what gives the field its clear oval shape even though the pattern never actually stops. The main border is a wide navy band of alternating large palmettes and flower heads joined by a thin meandering vine, framed on both sides by ivory guard stripes and a narrow turquoise ribbon at the outer edge.

Color: Deep Red Under Navy, Gold and Turquoise

The field is a saturated true red, closer to a clean cherry than to brick or rust, and the wool takes light so well that the same ground looks brighter along the length and deeper across the width as you move around the room. Against it, the border is a very dark navy that reads almost black in low light and opens up into blue when the sun hits it. The gold and soft wheat tones do most of the work in between: they fill the corner spandrels, halo the medallion and repeat through the ivory guard stripes, tying the two dominant colors together. Turquoise and mid blue appear constantly at small scale in the leaves and flower centers, giving the pattern a cool shimmer that keeps all that red from feeling heavy. Smaller touches of rust, olive, chocolate brown and clean white pick out individual petals, and the selvages finish in matching red with ivory fringe at both ends.

Najafabad, Isfahan and the Quality of the Weave

Najafabad sits in the Isfahan district of central Persia and has always woven to Isfahan cartoons, but with a heavier hand: a cotton foundation, a good thick wool pile and knot counts pitched for daily life rather than for the display cabinet. That trade-off is exactly why this rug still looks new after four decades. The reverse, shown against a tape measure in the last photograph, is tight and regular, with the pattern reading almost as clearly from the back as from the front, which is the honest test of a well-drawn workshop piece. The curved vine work, the correct registration of the corner spandrels against the medallion and the unbroken border rhythm over nearly 15 feet of length all point to an experienced weaver following a proper cartoon rather than improvising. At 9'11" x 14'9" this is a rug built to hold a large formal room for the next generation.