9'6" x 13' Persian Kerman Rug | Burgundy Field with Navy Medallion | 1980s Wool

Woven in southeast Persia in the 1980s, this 9'6" x 13' Persian Kerman rug follows the town formula that made Kerman famous: a wide open burgundy field, one navy medallion set dead center, and a deep border system that closes the whole composition. The wool is heavy and evenly clipped, the pile still stands up under the hand, and the drawing holds its precision from the medallion pendants out to the smallest boteh in the corners. At close to 10 by 13 feet it seats a full living room group or a 10 chair dining table with room to push back, which is why buyers searching 10x13 Persian rugs keep landing on pieces like this one. It ships with a certificate of authenticity recording origin, materials and measurements.

Design and Motifs

The center holds a lobed navy medallion filled with curling acanthus and palmette scrollwork, built around a small star shaped cartouche of pale blue flowers on ivory. Long ivory and olive pendants run off the top and bottom tips, ending in single boteh drops. The field around it is deliberately left open, scattered only with small bouquets and paisley boteh in blue, ivory and rose, so the eye travels straight to the medallion. The inner border is the giveaway detail for Kerman: a row of ivory arches, each one planted with a slender flowering tree in blue and brown, a cousin of the pictorial garden borders the town is known for. Outside that sits the main navy band of leafy vine and blossom, then a narrow ivory guard of running scroll. The 4 corners are resolved cleanly, with the arch row turning the corner without breaking rhythm, which tells you the weaver was following a properly drafted cartoon.

The Burgundy, Navy and Ivory Palette

The field is a true burgundy, a wine red with a cool edge rather than a bright tomato red, and because the field is mostly empty you see the wool itself change tone as the light moves across the pile. The medallion and the main border are a deep ink navy, dark enough to read almost black in shadow, and both are lit from inside by a second, much lighter sky blue used in the small flowers and in the tree branches of the arch border. Ivory does the structural work, outlining the medallion, filling the arches and running through the guard stripes, while a soft olive green appears as a thin contour line around nearly every ivory element and gives the drawing its definition. Touches of apricot, rose and pale gold warm the scrollwork. Anyone shopping burgundy Persian rugs for a room with navy upholstery or dark wood will find this combination easy to build around.

Kerman: The Weaving City of Southeast Persia

Kerman sits on the high desert plateau of southeast Persia and has been a commercial weaving center for centuries, with a reputation built on curvilinear drawing, fine local wool and a long tradition of pictorial and garden work that separates it from the geometric village weaves further north. Kerman looms are wide, so the city has always been the natural source for room size and larger pieces, and the workshop system there means a piece of this scale was worked by several weavers reading one master cartoon. The knotting here is fine enough to carry the curved outlines of the medallion and the tiny branching trees in the arch border without any stepping, and the wool has the slight sheen Kerman fleece is known for. Cotton warps and wefts under a full wool pile give the rug the weight and flat lay you want in a 13 foot piece.