9'4" x 13'8" Persian Isfahan Najafabad Rug | Deep Red Vase & Willow Tree Field | Hand-Knotted Wool, 2000s

This is a room-filling Persian Isfahan design rug, 9'4" x 13'8", hand-knotted in the 2000's with a full wool pile on a cotton foundation. The drawing is the classic Esfahan formula read at village scale: a small star medallion anchoring a deep red field that is packed, corner to corner, with flowering vases, slender willow trees and diamond lattice panels, all contained by a broad indigo border. The pile still stands tall and even, the ivory has not grayed, and the piece has never been used, which is unusual in large Persian rugs of this footprint. It ships with our certificate of authenticity documenting origin, materials and hand-knotted construction.

Design and Motifs

The center holds a compact navy star medallion filled with a grid of 8 petal rosettes in chestnut and ivory, ringed by pale lobes, stepped ivory cartouches and small woven garden gates. Radiating out from it, the field repeats 4 directions of the same vocabulary: footed vases spilling blue blossoms, cypress-slim trees, fan palms, and diamond panels laced with tiny white flower heads on a red ground. The ivory spandrels at all 4 corners carry a weeping willow rising from a low basin above a blue rosette trellis, the detail shown in the close-up photographs. The main indigo border runs a repeating sequence of olive gold palmettes and blue florettes joined by carnation and tulip vines, framed inside and out by narrow ivory guard stripes and a fine meander. Every element is symmetrical across both axes, which is what keeps a field this busy from reading as clutter.

Color Palette in Detail

The field is a deep tomato red with a faint abrash that shifts a shade warmer toward one end, the honest sign of small hand-dyed wool lots. Against it sit two separate blues: a dark indigo used for the border ground and the medallion core, and a brighter sky blue reserved for the blossoms, leaves and vase bodies, so the florals lift off the red rather than sink into it. Ivory and soft cream carry the spandrels, the medallion frame and the guard stripes, with olive gold and chestnut brown doing the shading work inside the palmettes and willow fronds. Touches of pale green and apricot appear in the smaller flower heads. If you are building a room around red and burgundy Persian rugs, this one gives you warm red as the base note with enough ivory to keep the space bright under lamplight.

Origin and Weaving Quality

Isfahan sits in central Persia and has set the standard for curved-line drawing since the Safavid court workshops of the 16th century, a history we cover in our complete guide to Isfahan rugs. Najafabad, the town west of Isfahan credited with this weave, works from the same cartoon tradition but on a sturdier wool-on-cotton build made for large formal rooms rather than for display pieces. The result is the design discipline of the city at a weight you can actually live on: a dense, tightly packed handle visible in the folded pile photographs, a low even clip that keeps the vase and willow outlines crisp, and flat-lying selvages with original fringe. Wool from this region takes dye deeply and burnishes with traffic, so a piece woven in the 2000's and never walked on has its entire service life ahead of it.