9'6" x 13'5" Persian Kashan Rug | Signed Navy Blue All Over Floral | Excellent Condition

Most Kashans built at this scale take the safe road: red field, one big medallion, done. This one does not. The weaver ran a continuous all over floral across the full 9'6" x 13'5" field on a deep navy blue ground, which means the drawing had to stay correct from the first row to the last with no medallion to anchor the eye. He then signed his work in an ivory cartouche at one end, something a weaver only does when the piece has come out the way he intended. Hand-knotted in wool on a cotton foundation with a 3/8" pile, the rug reads as a proper room-size piece for anyone shopping 10x13 Persian rugs, and it ships with a certificate of authenticity confirming origin, materials and hand-knotted construction.

Design and Motifs

The field carries a full repeat of palmettes, lobed rosettes and closed lotus buds joined by thin scrolling vines and serrated leaves, each blossom drawn separately rather than stamped out identically. Look closely at the detail photograph and you can see individual rosettes shaded from gold-brown at the center out through cream to ivory at the outer petals, with small feathery leaves filling the ground between the stems so almost no open field is left. The composition mirrors cleanly across both the long and short axes, which is the discipline that separates a workshop Kashan from a village copy. Framing it is a wide light blue main border of alternating cartouche-style palmettes and turning vines, held between four pairs of narrow guard stripes of reciprocal trefoils and running vinework. The signature cartouche sits centered in one end border, worked in ivory with dark navy script, and the corners of the main border resolve correctly with no broken or crowded drawing.

A Navy Field Lit by Ivory, Gold and Sky Blue

The ground is a saturated indigo navy, dark enough to read almost black in low light and to open into a clear deep blue under a lamp or in daylight. Against it the weaver set three tiers of contrast: ivory and soft cream for the large blossom heads, a warm gold-brown and rust for the flower centers and the smaller buds, and a pale sky blue for the leaves and vine tracery that carries most of the movement. That pale blue is the reason the rug does not feel heavy despite the dark field, and it is repeated at full strength in the wide main border, which lifts the whole outer frame a shade lighter than the center. Touches of soft green and a little apricot appear in the smaller border flowers. The palette is friendly to warm woods, brass, cream walls and tan or camel upholstery, and the dark ground is practical in a room that gets real use.

Kashan Weaving and the Signed Workshop Tradition

Kashan sits in central Persia north of Isfahan and has been weaving since the Safavid court workshops, which is why the city's output still carries that formal, drawn-on-paper quality and why Persian Kashan rugs remain the default choice for a traditional American living or dining room. Local wool is soft and lustrous, and it takes indigo and madder deeply, which is what gives this navy its depth rather than a flat printed look. The back photograph shows an even, tightly packed knot line with the pattern fully legible from the reverse, the mark of a weaver who kept consistent tension across nearly 13 and a half feet of warp. When you watch Shark Tank there is a Persian Kashan on the floor, and this is the same family of rug: a signed, room-size piece in excellent condition that will outlast the room it goes into.