9'6" x 12'10" Persian Kashan Rug | Red Field, Sky Blue Medallion | Semi-Antique, Excellent Condition

This is a room-filling 9'6" x 12'10" Kashan, hand-knotted in Persia with a wool pile on a cotton foundation, and it is the kind of piece that settles an entire room the moment it is unrolled. The field is a saturated red carrying a continuous lattice of curling vines, and it is broken by a single soft sky blue medallion that is unusual for a Kashan of this period, where the medallion is normally navy. The pile is still full at 3/8" with no low spots, the selvedges are tight and the ivory cotton fringe is intact at both ends, which is why it is graded in excellent condition. Among Persian Kashan rugs this falls squarely in the classic formula, and it is one of the better preserved 10x13 Persian rugs we have on the floor. Every rug we sell ships with a certificate of authenticity recording origin, materials and measurements.

Design and Motifs

The drawing is the textbook Kashan arrangement handled with real discipline. A lobed, pointed medallion sits dead center, finished top and bottom with small stepped pendants, and inside it an 8 petal rosette is ringed by palmettes and thin black arabesque scrolls. Around it the red field is not left open: it is filled edge to edge with an allover vine system of serrated lanceolate leaves, split palmettes and small rosettes, with pale ivory tendrils tracing long ovals across the ground so the eye keeps moving. The 4 corner spandrels repeat the medallion's palette in the same soft blue, each one packed with cloudband scrolls and flowering sprays, which frames the center without closing it in. The main border is a wide navy band of alternating upright palmettes and rosette cartouches joined by a meandering vine, flanked by a pair of lighter blue guard stripes carrying small repeating floral heads, then an outer ivory and red minor stripe. Corners resolve cleanly, which is the mark of a weaver following a proper cartoon rather than improvising at the ends.

Color Palette

The ground is a deep madder red with a faint cool cast to it, the shade that sits between cherry and burgundy and that shifts with the light as you walk around it. Against that, the medallion and spandrels are a dusty sky blue, almost a soft denim, which is a far gentler contrast than the usual navy and gives this piece a calmer, more antique look. Navy appears in the main border and in the small leaf and bud forms scattered through the field, anchoring the whole thing. The secondary colors are quietly varied: ivory and cream in the vine tracery and the guard stripes, warm salmon and apricot in the palmettes, olive and sage green in the leaves, and small touches of rose and gold in the flower centers. There is light natural abrash across the field, the gentle horizontal variation in the red that comes from hand-dyed wool, and it reads as depth rather than as a flaw. The wool has kept a soft sheen, so the red lifts under lamplight and settles darker in daylight.

Kashan Origin and Weaving Quality

Kashan sits in central Persia north of Isfahan, and its weaving pedigree runs back to the Safavid court workshops. The town's reputation comes from two things: soft lustrous local wool and a refusal to abandon the classic formula of a red field, a lobed central medallion and matching corner spandrels. When you watch Shark Tank there is a Persian Kashan on the floor, which tells you how deeply this look is embedded in what people picture when they picture a Persian rug. The weave here is a fine single-weft town weave on a cotton warp, dense and even, with the knot nodes sitting in tidy rows on the reverse, which is what holds the fine curved line of the vine work at this scale. A rug 9'6" x 12'10" is a serious loom commitment, and the consistency from end to end, with no narrowing and no drift in the border rhythm, is the reason a piece like this stays flat and wears evenly for another generation.