9'6" x 13' Persian Mashad Rug | Plum Red Floral Medallion | Signed Workshop Piece

A room-size Mashad with nothing held back. The field runs a saturated plum red, the medallion sits dead centre in deep navy, and the drawing between them never stops moving: curling vines, split palmettes, small rosettes and leaf sprays worked in ivory, gold, sage green and two tones of blue. The pile is 3/8" wool on a cotton foundation, still full and even edge to edge, and a small woven mark at the lower right of the field marks it as a workshop piece rather than anonymous village work, which is the norm for the better Persian Mashad rugs. At 9'6" x 13" of floor coverage it belongs with the true 10x13 Persian rugs, big enough to carry all four legs of a full seating group. Every rug we ship leaves with its certificate of authenticity.

Design and Motifs

The centre is an 8 petal rosette in coral and gold set inside a navy medallion, ringed by a band of lobed cartouches and finished top and bottom with slender anchor pendants that reach into the field. Around it the ground is not left open: it is packed with a continuous flowering system of arabesque vine, serrated acanthus leaves, blossoming palmettes and little star flowers, drawn in curved line rather than the angular village manner. The 4 corner spandrels are ivory, which lifts the medallion by contrast and gives the eye somewhere to rest. The main border is a navy ground carrying large boteh paisleys alternating with floral cones, flanked on both sides by ivory guard stripes of linked rosettes and a narrow red outer stripe. Look at the corner photo and the borders resolve cleanly, a sign the weaver worked a properly drawn cartoon rather than improvising the turn.

The Plum Red, Navy and Green Palette

The field colour is the reason to buy this rug. It is a plum-leaning red with a raspberry cast, cooler and more purple than the brick reds of the Heriz district and warmer than a true burgundy, and it shifts with the light across the length of the piece. Against it the navy reads almost black in the medallion core and the main border, which is what gives the rug its depth from across a room. The secondary colours do the detail work: ivory and cream in the spandrels and guard stripes, soft sage and olive green in the leaves, old gold in the palmettes, powder blue in the smaller blossoms, and small hits of coral and rose in the border cones. It sits comfortably with walnut and mahogany furniture, warm white walls and aged brass, and it is a strong candidate for anyone shopping red and burgundy Persian rugs who wants a red with more character than the usual.

Mashad and the Weave of Khorasan

Mashad is the great city of Khorasan in northeast Persia, a pilgrimage centre whose workshops have supplied large formal floor rugs for well over a century. The regional habit is exactly what you see here: generous room sizes, a red ground, a single dominant medallion and floral drawing that borrows from the Kerman and Isfahan vocabulary but keeps a heavier, bolder hand. Mashad wool is long-staple and takes dye with real depth, which is why the plum red holds its tone instead of going chalky. The back photo shows tight, regular knotting on a cotton foundation with clean cotton warp fringe, and the pile is even across the whole 13' length with no low spots or repairs. A signed Mashad of this size in this condition is a serious floor piece, not a decorator filler.