9'3" x 12'6" Persian Mashad Rug | Navy Floral Medallion on Crimson Red | 1980s, Excellent Condition

This is a room-size Mashad from the 1980s, hand-knotted in wool on a cotton foundation in the northeast of Persia, and it still carries a full even pile with its original ends and selvedges intact. At 9'3" x 12'6" it covers a full seating group or a 10 seat dining table with the chairs pulled out, which puts it squarely in the 9x12 Persian rugs class that most American living rooms are built around. What separates it from the ordinary market piece is the color: a deep raspberry crimson field rather than the usual brick red, lit from within by turquoise, salmon and ivory. Every rug we sell ships with a certificate of authenticity confirming origin, materials and hand-knotted construction.

Design and Motifs

The drawing follows the classic Mashad formula: a lobed navy medallion at center, crowned with a small cream and turquoise rosette at its heart, then two matching navy pendants running up and down the long axis. Around that medallion the field is not left open. It is filled edge to edge with a fine all over tracery of curling vine, palmettes, split leaves and small blossoms, with tiny flower-filled vases set at intervals along the outer field, visible clearly in the close photographs. The field is contained by a deeply scalloped navy surround whose cusped outline echoes the medallion, and the main border repeats the same vocabulary at larger scale: arabesque scrollwork, ivory cartouche panels, peach ground reserves and heavy palmette heads, with narrow turquoise and pink guard stripes on either side. The result reads as formal and symmetrical from a standing view, then rewards a close look with dozens of small hand-drawn variations.

A Crimson Field Lit by Turquoise and Salmon

The field color is the reason to own this one. It is a saturated raspberry crimson, cooler and more jewel-toned than the rust reds most people picture when they think of red Persian rugs, and it holds its intensity across the whole 9'3" x 12'6" surface without blotching. Against it the weaver set an inky midnight navy for the medallion, pendants and border ground, which gives the composition its backbone. The lighter register does the rest of the work: bright turquoise in the leafwork and guard stripes, soft salmon and peach in the corner reserves, clean ivory in the small blossoms and the cartouche panels, and shell pink scattered through the flower heads. Olive and sage green run through the leaves and stems as a quiet third note, warming the blues. The photographs under gallery lighting read slightly brighter and pinker than the rug does at home, where it settles into a richer wine crimson under lamplight.

Mashad, Khorasan, and the Weave

Mashad sits in Khorasan in the far northeast of Persia, a pilgrimage city with a long workshop tradition of large curvilinear medallion carpets drawn on paper cartoons and woven on cotton looms by the city's professional weavers. The wool of the region is long-stapled and lustrous, which is why a Mashad of this age still has body and sheen rather than a dry, tired handle. Turn this one over and the back shows a tidy, regular, close-packed knot, with the pattern legible down to the individual blossoms, and the dealer tag reading 9.3 x 12.6 confirming the loom width. If you want the background on how these city pieces are drawn, dyed and graded, our guide to Persian Mashad rugs covers it in detail.