9'6" x 12'8" Persian Mashad Rug | Kashan Medallion Design | Semi Antique Red & Navy

This is a semi antique city weaving from the Khorasan province of northeast Persia, measuring 9'6" x 12'8" and built on a cotton foundation with a dense 3/8" wool pile. The back label sewn to the corner records the weave as Mashad at 389 x 289 cm, and the drawing on the face is the classic court medallion formula that Mashad workshops borrowed from central Persia and made their own. It sits squarely in the most useful format we sell, so it is worth comparing against our other 10x13 Persian rugs before you decide. Condition is excellent, with even pile, intact selvages and original fringe, and every rug ships with our certificate of authenticity confirming the origin, materials and hand-knotted construction.

Design and Motifs

The field is organized around a pointed oval medallion drawn in the Kashan medallion design: a navy ground carrying a scalloped ivory cartouche, and inside that a sky blue lozenge filled with 4 wine red palmettes around a small central rosette. Lobed navy pendants extend from the top and bottom tips. The surrounding red field is not left open but filled with a continuous floral all over of palmettes, 8 petal rosettes, half palmettes and curling lanceolate leaves on thin hooked vines, all mirrored across both axes so the drawing reads the same from either end of the room. The 4 corner spandrels repeat the medallion vocabulary in ivory and blue against navy, which frames the center without crowding it. The main border is a navy band of alternating palmettes and rosettes linked by a meandering vine, and it is bracketed by narrow guard stripes of flowering vine in light blue, rose and ivory, finishing at a plain red outer edge.

The Color: Deep Red Field, Inky Navy Frame

The field color is a deep claret red with a faint raspberry warmth where the light catches the wool, darker and more serious than a tomato red and softer than a true burgundy. Against it the borders and the medallion ground go almost black, an inky navy blue that is only clearly blue in the close detail photographs. The contrast between those two tones does most of the work. The brightness comes from the smaller palettes inside the motifs: a clean sky blue in the medallion center and in the corner spandrels, warm ivory and cream in the cartouche and the guard stripes, salmon and apricot in the leaf tips, muted sage green in the rosette centers, a dusty rose pink in the border flowers and a few touches of camel and dark brown in the vine work. Nothing is harsh or synthetic looking. The whole scheme is a dark, layered red and navy that handles a formal room with upholstery in cream, taupe, forest green or navy, and the ivory outlining keeps the floral drawing legible even in low evening light.

Mashad, Khorasan, and the Weaving Quality

Mashad is the great weaving city of Khorasan in the far northeast of Persia, a pilgrimage center where urban workshops have produced large, formal medallion carpets for well over a century. The local wool is long stapled and takes dye deeply, which is why Persian Mashad rugs are known for rich reds that mature rather than fade. This piece shows the workshop hand clearly: the medallion is perfectly centered, the curved outlines of the palmettes and the scalloped cartouche are smooth with no village style stepping, and the side borders keep a consistent width over nearly 13 feet of length, which only happens when the loom is properly dressed and the weavers are working to a drawn cartoon. The back shows a tight, regular knot structure on a cotton warp with a short, firm handle, and the pile has been clipped low and evenly at about 3/8", so the drawing stays crisp. That combination of urban drawing, a resilient Khorasan wool pile and a true room size format is what makes a semi antique Mashad one of the most practical formal rugs a collector can actually live on.