9'4" x 12'9" Persian Kashan Rug | Navy Field, Ivory Medallion | Excellent Condition

This is a full room size Persian Kashan rug measuring 9'4" x 12'9", hand-knotted in wool on a cotton foundation with a 3/8" pile that still stands up crisply across the whole field. The drawing is formal and the execution is patient: a single ivory and sky blue sunburst medallion floating on a deep navy ground that has been filled, corner to corner, with curling floral vinery. Nothing about it is loud. It reads as a dark, quiet floor that pulls light into the center of the room, and at this size it sits comfortably under a 10 seat dining table or fills a living room wall to wall with furniture set on top. Condition is excellent, with even pile and clean, straight sides, and it ships with a certificate of authenticity confirming origin, materials and hand-knotted construction.

Design and Motifs

The center holds a round layered medallion built out of concentric rings of tiny petals, with a small 8 petal rosette at the exact core, ringed in navy and outlined in a thin line of rust. From that core the medallion opens outward like a sunflower into pointed ivory lobes, and the drawing then dissolves straight into the field instead of stopping at a hard edge. The field itself is a continuous all over pattern of palmettes, split leaves, serrated acanthus and multi petal rosettes carried on thin scrolling vines, mirrored top to bottom and left to right so the eye keeps finding the same flower again in a new place. All 4 corners carry ivory spandrel brackets drawn in the same vocabulary. The border system runs 5 bands deep: a broad main border of ivory reciprocal vinework with navy and sky blue palmettes set at intervals, flanked by narrow guard stripes of running vine and a final outer navy band. It is a classic formal layout, and the value of it here is the density of the infill.

The Navy, Sky Blue and Ivory Palette

The ground is a deep midnight navy, almost ink in the shadowed photographs and warming to a saturated indigo where the light falls across it. Against that darkness the weaver worked mainly in ivory and cream, which is what makes the pattern legible, and then lifted individual flowers with a clear sky blue and a soft teal that you see best in the close-up of the medallion and in the border palmettes. There are quieter supporting tones too: warm camel and light gold on the medallion rings and on scattered blossoms, and small hits of brick rust and dark brown used as outlining so the leaves keep their shape. The overall effect is cool rather than warm, which is unusual for the town and is the reason this piece works so well in rooms with grey upholstery, walnut floors or white walls. If this tonality is what you are after, it sits squarely in the family of navy blue Persian rugs.

Kashan Weaving in Central Persia

Kashan sits in central Persia, north of Isfahan, and its looms trace back to the Safavid court workshops that set the standard for the curved floral medallion carpet. The town's advantage was always its wool, soft and lustrous, which takes dye deeply and holds a sheen as the pile wears in, and its workshop discipline, where a drawn cartoon is followed exactly so a medallion of this complexity closes cleanly on both ends. Kashan is also the most recognized Persian design in America, and not only among collectors: when you watch Shark Tank there is a Persian Kashan on the floor. The usual Kashan formula is a red field with a navy medallion, so this inverted navy ground reading is the harder and less common version to find in a genuine, well drawn example. The ruler photograph shows the knot structure at the edge, tight and regular with the pile laid in one clean direction, and the overcast selvedges and full fringes are original. Among large room size Persian rugs, a piece this evenly woven at 9'4" x 12'9" is the kind that stays on a floor for 40 years.