9'6" x 14' Persian Kashan Rug | Navy Blue Field with Red Medallion | Excellent Condition

This is the classic Kashan formula turned inside out: instead of the usual red ground, the field of this 9'6" x 14' rug is a deep navy blue, and the red is saved for the medallion, the spandrel frames and the flowers that scatter across it. The result is a piece that reads calm and dark from across the room and then opens up into hundreds of small blossoms once you stand over it. At 114" by 168" it is a true room size piece that will sit under a full seating group or a 10 seat dining table, which puts it squarely in the 10x14 Persian rugs range buyers usually shop for great rooms. The pile is full and even, the wool has kept its sheen, and the condition is excellent throughout. Every rug we sell ships with a certificate of authenticity confirming it is hand-knotted in Persia. If you want the background on the type before you buy, our guide to Persian Kashan rugs covers the drawing conventions and what separates a workshop piece from a commercial one.

Design and Motifs

The center carries a pointed lobed medallion with an ivory core, a small red rosette at the very middle, and a stepped red surround that steps out into fine hooked edges. Long pendants run off both ends of the medallion and finish in small bud finials, and the 4 corners repeat the same idea in ivory spandrels drawn with curling split leaf arabesques. Across the navy field the weaver laid out a dense all-over vine: palmettes, 8 petal rosettes, serrated leaves and small cypress-like sprays, all connected by a thin scrolling stem that never quite repeats the same way twice. The main border is a navy band of large rosettes and palmettes joined by an undulating vine, flanked on each side by a pale blue guard stripe of small flower heads and then by narrow reciprocal minor stripes. The drawing is curvilinear from end to end, with no straight lines anywhere, which is what a Kashan cartoon demands and what a coarser weave cannot deliver.

Color: Navy Ground, Tomato Red and Ivory

The ground is a dark navy blue with a faint plum undertone that shows most clearly in the border close-ups, where light hits the pile at an angle. Against it the red is a warm tomato to brick tone, used for the medallion surround, the spandrel field and a large share of the flower heads, so the two dominant colors carry roughly equal visual weight even though the navy covers more ground. Ivory does the drawing work: it outlines the medallion core, fills the corner spandrels and picks out leaves and stems throughout, keeping the dark field from going flat. Between those three there are supporting notes of soft powder blue in the guard stripes and in scattered rosettes, gold and apricot in the smaller blossoms, and a sage green that shows up in the leafwork of the main border. The overall reading in a room is deep blue and red, which sits comfortably with mahogany, walnut, brass and cream upholstery.

Kashan: The Weaving Town and the Weave

Kashan sits in central Persia, north of Isfahan, and its weaving goes back to the Safavid court workshops. The town's reputation rests on two things: soft, lustrous local wool and an unwavering commitment to one design formula, the lobed medallion with matching spandrels and a palmette border. Kashan is also the most recognizable Persian rug in American living rooms, and when you watch Shark Tank there is a Persian Kashan on the floor. This piece is a proper workshop weave on a cotton foundation, knotted tightly enough to hold the curved vine lines cleanly at this scale, and the back view shows even, well packed rows with the pattern legible knot for knot. The selvedges are intact, the ends are secure with the original ivory fringe, and the pile depth is consistent across all 14 feet, which is the sign of a rug that was woven on a well tensioned loom and looked after since.