9'4" x 13'2" Persian Kashan Rug | Deep Red Floral Field, Navy Lobed Medallion | 1980s, Excellent Condition

This is the classic room-size Kashan, woven in central Persia in the 1980s and still carrying a full, even wool pile. The field is a deep tomato red, covered edge to edge with flowering vinework, and the drawing is held together by a small ivory and navy lobed medallion with matching navy spandrels in the 4 corners. At 9'4" x 13'2" it sits comfortably in the bracket most American buyers are shopping when they look at 10x13 Persian rugs, and it is the single most recognizable floor in American television: when you watch Shark Tank there is a Persian Kashan on the floor. Every rug we ship leaves Freeport with a certificate of authenticity recording origin, materials, size and age.

Design and Motifs

The center holds a small stepped medallion built in 3 stages: an 8 petal rosette in soft blue at the very middle, an ivory cartouche ring around it, and a navy lobed outline finished with paired pendants reaching up and down the length. From there the field fills with curling arabesque vines, shah abbas palmettes, serrated leaves, split rosettes and tiny ivory buds, all drawn in the curvilinear manner that separates workshop weaving from village work. The navy spandrels in the 4 corners repeat the same vocabulary at a larger scale, so the eye reads a single continuous garden rather than 2 separate schemes. The main border is a wide navy band of alternating palmettes and vase forms, flanked on each side by light blue guard stripes of connected rosettes, then a narrow reciprocal outer stripe. Corner resolution is clean and the border pattern turns properly at each corner, a detail worth checking on any Persian Kashan rug before you buy.

Color: Deep Red, Navy, Blue and Green

The ground is a deep saturated red with a slight tomato warmth rather than a cool burgundy, and because the wool is lustrous it shifts between a brighter cherry and a darker claret as you walk around it. Against that sit 3 distinct blues: an inky navy in the medallion, spandrels and main border, a clear mid blue in the guard stripes, and a pale sky blue used for small blossoms and the rosette at the very center. Green reads as olive and sage in the leaf stems and inside the larger palmettes, never as a block of color. The accent range is where this rug earns its personality, with rose pink petals, burnt orange flower hearts, soft gold outlines, chestnut brown and plenty of ivory used to separate one motif from the next. Ivory also runs the cotton fringe at both ends and keeps the dark border from looking heavy. The overall effect is a traditional red and blue palette that reads rich under lamplight and deeper in daylight.

Kashan: The Weaving Town and the Quality

Kashan sits in central Persia, north of Isfahan, and its looms trace back to the Safavid court workshops. The town built its reputation on 2 things: soft lustrous local wool and a design formula it refined for centuries, the red field, the dark lobed medallion and the ivory accented spandrels. This piece is a straightforward example of that tradition from the 1980s, woven on a cotton foundation with a tightly packed wool pile, firm handle and a flat, true shape that lies down without wrestling. The back photograph shows an even, regular knot grid with no sloppy lines, which is why a Kashan of this weight holds its drawing for generations under furniture and traffic. If you want to understand how the 1980s dating is established on a piece like this, our guide on how to date an Oriental rug walks through wool, dyes, foundation and finishing clues. Condition here is excellent, with full pile from end to end, intact selvages and original fringe.