9'6" x 13' Persian Mashad Rug | Red Field with Ivory Medallion | Signed Workshop Piece

A signature in the ivory guard border is the first thing worth pointing out on this rug. The weaver put his name into the top of the field, which in Khorasan means a workshop piece rather than an anonymous commercial run, and the drawing backs that up. This is a room size 9'6" x 13' example of the classic Persian Mashad rug formula: a deep red field carrying an all-over scrolling vine, a layered ivory and navy medallion at the center, and a broad eggplant purple border that is unusual enough to make the piece memorable. The pile is a full 3/8" of wool on a cotton foundation, the handle is supple, and the folded corner in the last photograph shows an even, tightly packed back with no repairs or reweaves. It arrives in excellent condition with a certificate of authenticity confirming origin, materials and hand-knotted construction.

Design and Motifs

The field is built around a lobed central medallion with a small ivory rosette at its core, ringed by curling sage and navy leaf forms and finished with a pendant at each end. Rather than leaving open ground around it, the designer filled the entire red field with a continuous lattice of curved vines, split palmettes, serrated saz leaves and small blossoms that read almost as an all-over pattern until you step back and the medallion pulls the eye in. The 4 corner spandrels are worked in ivory and sage green with large palmettes and cypress-like leaf sprays, and the way they echo the medallion shape is textbook Mashad drawing. The main border runs a repeating sequence of big scrolling palmettes and rosettes, flanked on both sides by narrow reciprocal guard stripes of small connected flowerheads. Look closely at the upper guard and the woven cartouche appears in red script on ivory, the weaver's mark on his own work.

A Red Field Framed in Eggplant Purple

The ground is a warm tomato red with a slight lacquer to it, the kind of red that goes soft and glowing under lamplight and reads brighter in daylight. What sets the rug apart is the border: instead of the usual navy, the weaver chose a deep eggplant purple, a dark aubergine that shifts toward plum where the light catches the pile and toward near-black in the shade. Against that frame the ivory guard stripes look crisp and the field looks even warmer. Inside the field the secondary palette is quiet and controlled, with sage and sea green leaf forms, several values of blue from pale sky to navy, small touches of mustard gold and apricot orange, and ivory used for outlines, the medallion core and the corner spandrels. There is no harsh contrast anywhere, and the abrash across the red is minimal, so the rug sits calmly in a room rather than fighting it.

Mashad Weaving in Khorasan

Mashad sits in Khorasan in the northeast corner of Persia, a pilgrimage city with a long commercial weaving tradition and access to the heavy, lustrous wool of the surrounding highlands. That wool is why a Mashad takes dye the way it does and why the pile keeps its sheen decades in. Mashad workshops weave on cotton with a curvilinear, fully drawn cartoon, which is what allows the vine scroll here to stay fluid across nearly 13 feet without the pattern drifting or the medallion sitting off center. A signed piece means the weaver or the workshop head was willing to stand behind it, and the consistency of the knotting across this rug is why. At 9'6" x 13' it belongs among 10x13 Persian rugs, the size that anchors a full seating group with the front legs of every piece of furniture on the wool.