9'6" x 18'9" Antique Persian Kerman Lavar Rug | Banana Gold Field, Coral Medallion | Palace Length

At 9'6" x 18'9" this Persian Kerman was drawn for a room that almost no rug is built for: a long formal salon, a double living room, a banquet hall where the floor runs 19 feet before it meets a wall. The field is a pale banana gold, dense with floral vinework, and it is held together by a single coral red medallion that reads clearly from across the room. The pile is a low 3/8" wool on a cotton foundation, which is exactly what you want in a piece this large, because it lies flat, takes traffic, and shows the drawing instead of hiding it. Pieces at this length in this palette rarely surface in good condition, and buyers shopping oversize Persian rugs know how few honest options there are above 18 feet. It ships with our certificate of authenticity documenting origin, materials and hand-knotted construction.

Design and Motifs

The center holds a coral red lobed medallion with radiating points, filled edge to edge with tiny ivory and green blossoms and outlined in dark blue so the silhouette stays crisp. Above and below it a slender coral pendant steps out toward each end of the field, and the 4 corners carry matching spandrel drawing kept in the same golden tone rather than contrasting against it, a quiet choice that lets the long field breathe. Everything between is all-over floral: scrolling vines, split palmettes, curling serrated leaves, small rosettes and buds packed tight but never muddled, with the drawing mirrored across both axes. The main border is the part a collector looks at first here, a wide coral red band of linked palmettes and ivory blossoms with a garden feel, framed by narrow blue-black guard stripes and floral minor borders on both sides. Corner resolution in the border is properly worked out, which on a rug 18'9" long is a real test of the loom drawing.

Banana Gold, Coral and the Supporting Palette

The field is banana: a soft golden yellow that sits between straw and warm butter, shifting slightly lighter and deeper across the width the way a naturally dyed ground does. Against it the coral reds do the structural work, a clear tomato-coral in the medallion and a slightly deeper, denser coral through the main border. The secondary colors are what give the rug its age and charm. Sage and sea green appear in the large curling leaves and in scattered blossoms, mid blue and blue-black run through the outlines, the guard stripes and the small flower heads, and ivory picks out petals, tendrils and the narrow flanking bands. Pinks and apricot show up in the smaller rosettes when you look closely. The overall read from standing height is gold and coral, warm and light rather than dark, which makes this an unusually easy oversize rug to live with on pale oak or stone floors.

Kerman: The Weaving City and the Quality of the Weave

Kerman sits in the high desert of southeast Persia, and its weavers built their reputation on two things: dyeing and drawing. The Lavar name, from the town of Ravar north of the city, has long been attached to the most finely drawn Kerman work, the pieces where the vine scroll stays true and the border garden resolves properly at the corners. This rug shows that hand. It is a workshop piece, woven to a cartoon on a cotton foundation with a closely clipped 3/8" wool pile, and the density of small motifs in the field tells you the knot count is well above what village looms in the region managed. The wool has the faint sheen that older Kerman fleece develops with decades of use, and the low even pile with no thin spots is why the condition reads as excellent. If you want to understand how weavers, dyes and structure place a rug like this in time, our guide on how to date an oriental rug walks through the same clues we used.