9'5" x 12'7" Persian Kashmar Rug | Navy Blue Vase Border Medallion | Traditional Antique Design

Laid out flat, this rug reads as one continuous garden. An indigo field is packed edge to edge with flowering vines, blossoms, small birds and standing animal figures, and the whole composition is pulled to center by a lobed medallion in rose and ivory. At 9'5" x 12'7" it sits at the upper end of the 10x13 Persian rugs range, wide enough to carry a full seating group with pattern still visible around the furniture. The pile is dense 3/8" wool on a cotton foundation, still full and even, with the faint sheen that good Khorasan fleece keeps for decades. It ships with our certificate of authenticity.

Design and Motifs

The center medallion is a pointed ivory and rose cartouche ringed by a ring of small blossoms, with slender pendants reaching north and south into the field. Around it the drawing never rests: split-leaf arabesques, palmettes, rosettes and thin curling vines run in every direction, interrupted by tiny woven birds, deer and stylized vessels that reward close looking. All 4 corners carry heavy crimson spandrels built from scrolling serrated leaves, which frame the field and give the eye somewhere to land. The main border is the piece's signature, a wide pale green ground filled with a procession of vases, footed urns, ewers and covered jars, each one drawn differently and each one outlined in rust, cobalt and deep red. Narrow ivory guard stripes of running floral meander separate the border from the field on both sides, and a fine navy outer stripe finishes the edge.

Color: Indigo Ground, Pale Green Border, Rose and Rust Accents

The field is a deep indigo blue that shifts toward a lighter cornflower tone where the wool takes the light, which is exactly what you want from naturally dyed Khorasan wool rather than a flat single note. Sitting on it are brick red and rose madder in the spandrels and larger palmettes, a warm ivory used for outlining and for the medallion core, and small hits of pistachio and grass green in the leaves. The border swings the palette the other way: a soft chartreuse, closer to pale green-gold than true ivory, which lifts the whole rug and keeps a large dark-ground piece from feeling heavy in the room. Inside the vases you get apricot, terracotta, soft pink and a pale sky blue, so the border carries more color variety than the field does. Overall it is a blue and red rug that will sit comfortably with cream walls, walnut and oak furniture, brass, and both warm and cool upholstery.

Kashmar and the Khorasan Weaving Tradition

Kashmar is a weaving town in Khorasan, in northeastern Persia, southwest of the provincial capital and part of the same regional school that produces Persian Mashad rugs. The town built its reputation on pictorial and vessel drawing, the kind of border seen here, worked on a cotton foundation with a firm double-weft structure that keeps a room-size rug flat and square. The wool comes from Khorasan flocks, long-stapled and high in lanolin, which is why the 3/8" pile still feels dense underfoot and why the colors have aged evenly rather than going patchy. Knot count here is in the workshop range rather than the village range: fine enough to draw a bird's wing and a vase handle cleanly, heavy enough to take daily traffic in a living or dining room for another generation. Further reading on how regional Khorasan weaving is judged is in our Persian Mashad rug guide.