9'5" x 12' Persian Kashmar Rug | All-Over Floral on Raspberry Red | Semi-Antique, Excellent Condition

This is a room-size Persian Kashmar woven in Khorasan, 9'5" x 12' of hand-knotted wool on a cotton foundation, with a deep raspberry red field drawn edge to edge in flowering vines and a wide ivory border. The pile stands a full 3/8" and is even across the whole surface, with no thin areas, so the drawing still reads crisply in raking light, as the close-up photo shows. At 113" x 144" it covers a standard formal room and sits comfortably in the 9x12 Persian rugs range that most dining and living rooms are built around. Every rug we ship, this one included, leaves Freeport with a certificate of authenticity recording origin, materials, size and weave.

Design and Motifs

There is no central medallion here. The field is a true all-over composition, a lattice of thin scrolling vines that carries large open palmettes, 8 petal rosettes, serrated leaves and small lanceolate buds, each one mirrored across both the long and the short axis so the pattern repeats in quarters. The palmettes are the anchors: broad fans outlined in near-black navy, filled with pink, celadon and caramel, with curled cloud-band leaves whipping out from their bases. Between them sit smaller floral sprays and tendrils that keep the red ground busy without crowding it, which is why this layout hides traffic and furniture legs so well. The border system runs 3 bands deep: a wide ivory main border of linked palmettes and vines reading in the same vocabulary as the field, flanked by 2 narrow soft green guard stripes of running rosettes, with a final thin outer line and plain cotton fringe at both ends.

Color: Raspberry Red, Ivory and Soft Seafoam

The field is a cool raspberry red, closer to rose and cranberry than to brick or tomato, and it shifts noticeably with the nap: deeper and wine-toned from one end, brighter and pinker from the other. Against it the ivory border reads almost cream, warmed by beige and a touch of pale apricot in the palmette centers. The accent palette is what dates and softens the rug: muted seafoam and celadon green in the guard stripes and leaf work, dusty rose and salmon pink in the rosettes, camel and tobacco brown in the leaves, and a dark navy that functions as the outlining color throughout rather than as a field color. Nothing in the palette is harsh or chemical looking, and the greens in particular give the red a gentle, slightly faded formality. Buyers working with a cranberry or rose scheme will find it sits naturally with the rest of our red and burgundy Persian rugs.

Kashmar and the Khorasan Weaving Tradition

Kashmar is a town in Khorasan, in the northeast of Persia southwest of Mashad, and it weaves inside the same regional tradition as the city workshops, which is why Kashmar pieces are usually grouped and sold with Persian Mashad rugs. The regional formula is a firm cotton foundation, a generous wool pile and a curvilinear floral vocabulary borrowed from the classical court repertoire but drawn with a looser, warmer village hand. That is exactly what this rug is: not a 500 knot atelier piece pretending to be a painting, but a well made room-size floor rug with honest Khorasan wool that takes dye deeply and wears slowly. The back shown against the ruler is tight and regular, the selvedges are intact, the fringe is full and original, and after decades the pile has mellowed rather than worn. It is the kind of rug you put under a dining table and stop worrying about.