9'7" x 10'8" Persian Kashan Rug | Squarish Floral Medallion | 1980s, Excellent Condition

At 9'7" x 10'8" this is a squarish format, only 13 inches longer than it is wide, which is exactly what you want when a room reads square and a standard 9x12 would sit off center. It is a 1980s Persian Kashan rug, hand-knotted in wool on a cotton foundation, with a deep red field, a navy lobed medallion and ivory corner spandrels. The pile is full and even across the whole surface, the fringes and both selvedges are sound, and nothing has been painted, patched or reduced. It ships with a certificate of authenticity. Buyers hunting square Persian rugs know how rarely this proportion turns up in a real workshop weave.

Design and Motifs

The drawing is the classic Kashan formula, executed densely. A navy medallion sits dead center, lobed and outlined in ivory, with a small sky blue star rosette at its heart and pendant palmettes reaching top and bottom. Around it the red field is filled edge to edge with curling vine, serrated leaves, 8 petal rosettes and split palmettes, so there is no empty ground anywhere, and the composition still reads as medallion-and-corner rather than all over because the ivory spandrels close the 4 corners firmly. The border system runs 5 bands: a narrow reciprocal outer guard, a light blue vine stripe, the wide navy main border with alternating palmettes and cloud bands, then ivory guards on either side carrying their own small blossom trail. Corner resolution is clean, the border turns are drawn out properly rather than cut short, and the field pattern is mirrored on both axes.

Colors in Detail

The field is a true Kashan red, closer to a cool crimson than to brick, and it shifts slightly with the nap from deep garnet to a brighter cherry where the light catches the pile. Against it the medallion and main border are an inky navy, nearly black in the shadows of the close-up photographs. The secondary border stripe is a clear mid sky blue, a lighter and more open tone that lifts the whole frame, and it reappears in the medallion center and in small flower heads scattered across the field. Ivory is the third structural color, used for the spandrels, the guard borders and the outlines that keep every vine legible. Greens run from olive to a soft moss in the leaves and leaf tips. The accents are where this rug gets its charm: saffron yellow and gold outlining, dusty rose and pink blossoms, pale celadon, and small touches of warm brown. There is no bleeding between tones and no abrash that distracts, just a saturated, many-colored palette typical of good Kashan dye work.

Kashan Origin and Weaving Quality

Kashan lies in central Persia, north of Isfahan, and its looms carry a Safavid court workshop tradition that never really broke. The town is known for soft, lustrous local wool and for exactly this palette, a red field with a navy lobed medallion and ivory spandrels, which is why Kashan is the Persian rug most people picture when they picture a Persian rug. When you watch Shark Tank there is a Persian Kashan on the floor. The weave here is a firm city weave on a cotton warp and weft, with a tight knot count that holds the curved vine work without the lines breaking into steps, and a clipped pile that shows the drawing crisply. Squarish dimensions like 9'7" x 10'8" require a wider loom and more careful tension work than a standard long format, so this is workshop production rather than village weaving, and after 40 years the pile depth and the straight, unroped sides show how well it was made.