9'4" x 12'10" Persian Kashan Rug | Greenish Grey Paisley Medallion | Signed Cartouche

This is one of the quieter, more sophisticated pieces in our room-size inventory: a signed 9'4" x 12'10" Kashan with a greenish grey field that reads almost sage in daylight, framed by a wide sky blue border packed with paisley. Most Persian Kashan rugs arrive in the classic red and navy formula, so a muted grey green ground on a piece this large is genuinely uncommon and much easier to live with in a modern interior. The wool is soft and lustrous with a 3/8" pile on a cotton foundation, the ends and sides are clean, and the weaver signed the piece in a small cartouche at the top end. It ships with a certificate of authenticity, and at 112" x 154" it covers a full seating group the way the best 9x12 Persian rugs do, with a little extra length.

Design and Motifs

The drawing is pure Kashan: a large lobed central medallion built from curling acanthus leaves and thin brown vines, with a small navy and rose rosette at the dead center and matching half medallions anchoring the 4 corners of the field. Around the medallion the field is left mostly open, scattered with single boteh, small palmettes and a light spray of tiny leaves that keeps the grey ground from reading flat. The border is where the rug becomes unusual. Instead of a formal repeating band, the main border runs as a continuous garden of large paisley boteh, curved and hooked, each one filled with its own miniature floral interior, linked by scrolling vines and blossoms. Pendant palmettes drop from the top and bottom of the medallion into the field, and the corner spandrels dissolve into the same paisley and vine language rather than sitting as hard blocks. It is a curvilinear, workshop-drawn pattern throughout, with no repeated stencil work visible from one end to the other.

Greenish Grey Field and Sky Blue Border

The field is a soft greenish grey, a warm stone tone with a green cast that shifts toward pale sage under lamplight and toward silver in daylight. The wide border is a distinctly lighter sky blue, almost powder blue, which gives the rug an airy frame rather than the heavy dark surround most large Persian rugs carry. Inside the paisley work the palette opens up: cornflower and deep navy blue, dusty rose and old ivory, mustard gold, pale peach, aubergine, and small touches of true red in the flower centers. The vine scroll is drawn in a soft camel brown that ties the field and border together. Nothing here is loud. The whole rug sits in the muted, faded-elegance range that works with grey and greige walls, walnut furniture and blue upholstery, and it belongs with the softer grey and charcoal Persian rugs rather than the traditional red group.

Kashan, the Weaving Town and the Weave

Kashan sits in central Persia, north of Isfahan, and its workshops trace their tradition back to the Safavid court looms. The town is known for soft, lustrous local wool and for disciplined curvilinear drawing, which is exactly what you see on the back of this piece: fine, even, well-packed knots with the design reading as clearly from the reverse as from the pile. A woven cartouche at the top end names the town and the weaver, and a signature on a Kashan of this size means it left a named workshop rather than a village loom. It is the most recognizable Persian design in America: when you watch Shark Tank there is a Persian Kashan on the floor. This one just happens to wear the formula in grey green and sky blue instead of red and navy, with the depth of pile and clean condition of a rug that has never been put to real use.