9'4" x 12'8" Persian Kashan Rug | Navy Blue Floral Medallion | Signed Cartouche, Excellent Condition

Most Kashans you meet are red. This one is not, and that is the first reason to look twice at it. The field is a deep, inky navy, and against it the weaver has set a pale sage and powder blue star medallion that reads almost like moonlight on water. It is a hand-knotted Persian Kashan rug in wool on a cotton foundation, finished with a woven signature cartouche in the upper border, which tells you it left a named workshop rather than an anonymous loom. At 9'4" x 12'8" it sits squarely in the range of large Persian area rugs that anchor a full seating group without crowding the walls. The pile is even across the whole surface with no thin areas, the sides and ends are sound, and a certificate of authenticity ships with the rug.

Design and Motifs

The drawing follows the classic Kashan formula, executed with more restraint than usual. A large 8 point star medallion holds the center, its sage ground filled with curling cloud bands, small blue lotus heads and salmon buds, all built around a rust colored rosette core. Above and below it sit matching pendants, each one a small lobed cartouche with a curling palmette finial. The rest of the field is a continuous vine lattice: palmettes, rosettes, serrated leaves and half open lotus blossoms that repeat across the navy ground without ever falling into a mechanical grid, since the weaver has rotated and varied the flower heads as the vine travels. Faint sage tinted quarter spandrels mark the 4 corners, so the medallion reads as the middle of a much larger imagined garden. The main border carries an alternating palmette and rosette scroll on ivory, framed by 4 narrow guard stripes, the innermost of which is a fine reciprocal vine in taupe and blue that keeps the whole composition tightly contained.

A Navy Field With a Cool, Silvered Palette

Color is what sets this piece apart. The ground is a saturated midnight navy that goes almost black in low light and opens up to a clear indigo under a lamp, and every other tone in the rug is chosen to sit gently on top of it rather than fight it. The medallion works in soft sage and celadon green with powder blue tracery and ivory outlining, so it lifts off the field without glare. Through the flowers you get pale ash blue, cream, silvered taupe, olive green leaves and quick touches of salmon and terracotta that provide the only real warmth, mostly in the small bud heads and in the rosette at the medallion core. The ivory main border is the brightest element in the rug and acts as a frame of light around the dark field. The overall effect is cool and dignified rather than showy, which makes it an easy match for grey, blue, walnut and cream interiors where a traditional red Persian would be too loud.

Kashan: Central Persia's Court Workshop Tradition

Kashan lies in central Persia, north of Isfahan, and its looms trace their reputation back to the Safavid court workshops, where the curved line and the balanced medallion layout were first perfected. Local wool is soft and lustrous and takes indigo particularly well, which is exactly what you see in this navy ground. Weavers there work from a full cartoon on a cotton warp and weft, knotting a short, dense pile that holds fine floral drawing cleanly, and the workshop signature woven into the border of this piece is the maker putting his name on the finished cartoon. Kashan is also the most recognizable Persian design in America: when you watch Shark Tank there is a Persian Kashan on the floor. This example keeps the format and the weaving discipline while trading the familiar red ground for navy, which is the harder and rarer version to find in a room size of 9'4" x 12'8".