9'4" x 12'8" Persian Kashan Rug | Ivory Floral Field with Lavender Medallion | Excellent Condition

Most Kashans come to us on a deep red ground, which makes an ivory one like this worth stopping for. The field is a soft cream, drawn end to end with a fine curvilinear vine, and the single lavender medallion sits in the center like a piece of inlay rather than a shout. At 9'4" x 12'8" it is a true room size piece, large enough to carry a sofa group on all four legs or to run under a 10 seat dining table with chair clearance to spare, and it sits comfortably among our large room size Persian rugs. The pile is a firm 3/8" of wool on a cotton foundation, the ends are original with the fringe intact, and the condition is excellent with even pile from border to border. Every rug we ship carries a certificate of authenticity that records origin, materials and size.

Design and Motifs

The drawing is classic Kashan workshop work. A lobed lavender medallion holds an 8 petal rosette at its core, with a small red center and green petal shadows, and pendants drop from both ends toward the ends of the rug. Around it the field never goes quiet: split palmettes, serrated lanceolate leaves, rosettes and half open buds ride a continuous vine scroll that mirrors itself across both axes. The corner spandrels are woven in the same ivory as the ground with only their outlines drawn in, so the corners stay open while the pattern still resolves. Five border bands frame the whole thing, a wide ivory main border of alternating palmettes and cloud sprays flanked by lavender guard stripes of linked rosettes and a fine meander at the outer edge. Look at the corner photograph and the border turns cleanly at all 4 corners, which is the mark of a cartoon that was properly drawn before the first knot was tied.

Ivory Ground with a Lavender and Plum Palette

The field is ivory with a faint straw warmth in the wool, the kind of cream that reads light without going stark white against oak or walnut flooring. The medallion, the spandrel outlines and the guard stripes all use a muted lavender that shades toward soft lilac in the pile and toward plum where the outlines thicken, and that plum repeats as the dividing line between every border band. Inside the vinework the palette opens up: navy for the darkest leaf outlines, a mid sky blue and a touch of teal in the rosettes, olive and moss green in the leaves, warm rust and brick in the palmette hearts, with pinpoint accents of tomato red, orange and clear white that lift the whole surface at close range. It is a quiet rug from across the room and a busy, richly colored one from 3 feet away, which is exactly why ivory ground Kashans work under furniture that already has a lot going on.

Kashan: The Town and the Weave

Kashan sits in central Persia north of Isfahan and has been weaving since the Safavid court workshops, which is where the curvilinear medallion format on this rug comes from. The town is known for soft, lustrous local wool and for a tight, regular knot on a cotton foundation, and you can see both here in the crisp outlines and the way the pile takes light. It is also the most recognizable Persian design in America: when you watch Shark Tank there is a Persian Kashan on the floor. If you want the full background on the town, the drawing conventions and how to judge one in person, read our Persian Kashan rugs guide. This particular piece shows the workshop hand throughout, with straight selvages, level pile at the full 3/8" depth and a back that is tight and even, a rug built to be walked on in a main room for decades rather than kept off to the side.