9'6" x 13'2" Persian Kashan Rug | Ivory Floral Field with Signed Cartouche | Excellent Condition

This signed persian kashan rug measures 9'6" x 13'2" and was woven in central Persia on a cotton foundation with a dense 3/8" wool pile. The ivory field is worked edge to edge with fine floral tracery around a lobed navy and sky blue medallion, and the weaver's name cartouche sits in the inner border, which on a Kashan almost always means a named workshop piece rather than village work. Condition is excellent: full even pile, straight sides, intact selvages and original fringe, with the drawing still crisp enough to read every leaf spine. It ships with a certificate of authenticity.

Design and Motifs

The drawing is classic Kashan. A lobed medallion sits dead center, built from a rosette core, pale blue cartouche lobes and small orange palmettes, and it closes top and bottom in pointed pendants. Around it the ivory ground carries an all over field of curling vine, feathered saz leaves, 8 petal rosettes and small carnation sprays, drawn tight and mirrored so the two halves of the field answer each other exactly. The 4 corners are filled with spandrels that repeat the same vine in a darker, denser reading, and a narrow sky blue line outlines the field before the borders begin. The main border runs palmettes and hooked vine on an ivory ground, with a stack of narrow guard stripes on each side of it, and the signature cartouche breaks into one of those inner bands between rows of rust flowerheads on pale blue. It is a disciplined, formal layout, the kind of pattern that gives a large room a center without shouting.

A Closer Look at the Colors

The field is a warm ivory, nearer cream than white, and it carries almost all of the light in the rug. Two blues do the structural work against it: a deep navy for outlines, leaf spines and the medallion frame, and a soft sky blue, close to cornflower, for the medallion interior, the field outline and the guard stripes. The warm tones are used as punctuation rather than mass, with rust orange in the border flowerheads and palmette centers, mustard gold in small buds and vine tips, and occasional pinpoints of true red at the heart of a rosette. A pale greyed green surfaces in a few leaves. Because the whole palette is built on ivory, this is one of the calmer, lighter ivory Persian rugs rather than a red ground statement piece, and it settles just as well on pale oak as it does on dark walnut.

Kashan: The Town and the Weave

Kashan sits in central Persia, north of Isfahan on the desert edge, and its workshop tradition runs back to the Safavid court looms of the 16th century. The local wool is soft and unusually lustrous, which is why a Kashan picks up light the way this one does, and the town has stayed loyal to a single formula of lobed medallion, spandrels and finely drawn vine field. When you watch Shark Tank there is a Persian Kashan on the floor. The weave here is a tight symmetrical knot on a cotton foundation, clipped to 3/8 inch so the outlines stay sharp, and the cartouche in the border marks it as a named workshop piece rather than anonymous village work. Among 10x13 Persian Kashan rugs, signed examples still in this condition are the ones worth holding out for.