9'6" x 12'10" Persian Mashad Rug | Signed Floral Medallion | 1980s Excellent Condition

Woven in the 1980s and signed with a small cartouche set into the top border, this 9'6" x 12'10" Persian Mashad rug is the classic Khorasan statement piece: a deep red field crowded with curling vine, a navy lobed medallion holding the center, and a triple border that steps ivory, indigo, ivory. The pile is heavy Khorasan wool at 3/8 inch, hand-knotted on a cotton foundation, and it still stands full and even from the fringe to all 4 corners. A signed piece out of Mashad is a workshop piece, drawn from a cartoon and woven to order rather than assembled from memory, and the discipline shows in how cleanly the medallion pendants resolve against the field. Every rug we ship carries a certificate of authenticity.

Design and Motifs

The layout is the traditional Mashad medallion and corner formula, but the drawing is busier and more floral than most village work. At the center sits an 8 lobed rosette medallion on a navy ground, ringed by small turquoise and gold blossoms, with long serrated pendants running up and down the long axis. Four navy spandrels fill the corners with matching palmettes and split leaves. Between them the field never rests: lanceolate leaves, curled saz foliage, rosettes and paired birdlike blossoms spiral out along thin vine work, mirrored left to right and top to bottom so the whole field reads as one continuous composition. The main border carries alternating palmettes and cloud band scrolls on indigo, framed by two ivory guard borders of small rosettes and a fine reciprocal outline that keeps the edges crisp.

Deep Red, Indigo, Ivory and Turquoise Green

The field is a true Mashad red, a deep cochineal tone that leans slightly blue rather than orange and darkens where the pile lies against the light. Against it the indigo of the medallion, the spandrels and the main border reads almost black at a distance and opens into clear navy up close. The ivory guard stripes do the real work, drawing bright lines around every navy shape so the composition stays legible across nearly 13 feet. Inside the drawing the palette widens: soft turquoise and sea green leaves, old gold and olive stems, apricot and camel outlines, and small hits of rose and cream in the flower heads. The ivory fringe and the pale outer selvage finish it cleanly. In a room it grounds warm woods and reads as a rich, saturated red rather than a bright one.

Mashad Weaving in Khorasan

Mashad sits in Khorasan in the northeast of Persia, a pilgrimage city that has supported professional workshops for centuries and draws on some of the best wool in the country. Khorasan fleece is long stapled and oily, which is why Mashad pile keeps its sheen decades in and why a 40 year old piece like this one still feels dense underfoot. The back, shown folded in the last photograph, is tightly and evenly knotted with a clear grain and no slack, the mark of a workshop loom rather than a home loom. Among room-size 10x13 Persian rugs a signed Mashad in this condition is the uncommon one, because most surviving examples of this age have lost their pile height long before the design begins to wear.