9'3" x 11'9" Persian Kashan Rug | Beige Field with Olive Green Borders | 1970s Estate Piece

This Persian Kashan rug came out of a private estate, woven in the 1970s and kept in a formal room that clearly saw little traffic: the wool still stands up with a full, even nap from end to end, the ivory cotton fringe is intact, and both sides lie flat with no rippling. At 9'3" x 11'9" it covers the same floor as the standard 9x12 Persian rugs buyers look for, with a little extra length that suits a long sofa wall or a 10 seat dining table. Hand-knotted wool pile on a cotton foundation, light enough in tone to brighten a dark room, and it ships with a certificate of authenticity.

Design and Motifs

The drawing is the classic Kashan formula read in soft tones. At the center sits a many lobed floral medallion in camel and olive, built outward from an 8 petal rosette core set on pale celadon green, with coral feather sprays radiating between the petals and a small navy outlined disc at the very middle. Around it the beige field is filled edge to edge with an all-over scheme of rosettes, palmettes, split arabesques and feathery saz leaves joined by a fine navy vine, so the pattern never leaves a bare patch of ground. The 4 corners carry matching spandrels in olive and dove grey, their arabesques outlined in rust so the medallion appears to float on a diamond of open field. The wide main border runs a stately procession of blossoms and leafy sprays on olive camel ground, flanked on both sides by ivory and pale blue guard stripes of reciprocal vine scroll, with a final narrow navy outline holding the whole composition together.

The Beige and Olive Green Palette in Detail

The field is a warm ivory beige, closer to sand than to white, with a faint peach cast where the light catches the wool at an angle. Against it the borders read olive green shading toward camel and antique gold, which is what gives the rug its quiet, slightly faded look even though the pile is unworn. The dark outlines are navy blue rather than black, and they do the structural work: every blossom and leaf is drawn in navy so the design stays legible from across a room. The accents are what make it interesting up close, with rust and coral in the small flower heads, soft peach and cream in the half blossoms, brown in the larger rosettes, a pale celadon green at the medallion core and in parts of the spandrels, and dove grey blue through the leaves and the guard stripes. Nothing in the palette shouts. It sits comfortably with oak and walnut, warm white walls, brass, and linen upholstery, and it is forgiving of cream or grey furniture that a red field rug would fight with.

Kashan: The Town and the Weave

Kashan sits in central Persia, north of Isfahan, and its workshops trace their drawing straight back to the Safavid court tradition of the 16th century. The local wool is soft and lustrous, which is why a Kashan takes dye the way it does and why the pile keeps a faint sheen decades later. These are city workshop rugs rather than village work: a curvilinear medallion like this one, with its continuous vine and precisely mirrored spandrels, only resolves cleanly on a tightly set cotton warp worked by weavers following a cartoon. Kashan is also the most recognizable Persian design in American interiors, and when you watch Shark Tank there is a Persian Kashan on the floor. This example is a 1970s piece, firmly in the period when the town was turning out some of its most saleable light ground room sizes, and the tight even back, hand-overcast selvedges and original fringe are the markers a buyer should check when learning how to date an Oriental rug.