9'7" x 12'4" Persian Mashad Rug | All-Over Mahal Floral Design | Signed Border Cartouche

A room-size floral weaving with a small woven cartouche set into the main border, this piece belongs to the workshop tradition behind the best Persian Mashad rugs. The wool pile stands a full 3/8" high, the burgundy field carries an uninterrupted floral repeat with no central medallion, and the drawing stays clean and readable from one end to the other across nearly 12 and a half feet. The handle is heavy and supple, the sides and ends are intact, and the condition is excellent throughout, with no repairs, no reweaves and no thin areas. Every rug we sell ships with a certificate of authenticity confirming it is hand-knotted and woven in Persia, and this one is large enough to anchor a formal room without the field pattern ever feeling repetitive.

Design and Motifs

The field is a true all-over floral composition in the Mahal design tradition: an open lattice of thin vine scroll carrying layered palmettes, 8 petal rosettes, small ivory blossoms and long curled serrated leaves that hook back on themselves. Because there is no medallion, the eye reads the repeat as a continuous garden rather than a single focal point, which is exactly why this layout survives furniture placement so well. The main border is the strongest element in the rug, a deep navy ground filled with big paired boteh-style leaf forms and flowering palmette bouquets, broken at the center of one end by the small woven cartouche. Two narrow floral guard stripes on ivory and a slate blue minor border frame that band on each side, and the corners resolve cleanly rather than being cut off, which tells you the weaver planned the cartoon out to the full 4 corners before starting.

A Deep Burgundy Field With Navy, Ivory and Rose

The ground is a saturated burgundy that leans toward wine and raspberry where the light catches the pile, with gentle horizontal variation through the field that is the natural signature of small dye lots rather than any flaw. Against it, the floral work is drawn in ivory and cream, dusty rose pink, soft teal and petrol blue, olive and sage green, camel and a dark aubergine brown used for outlining. The main border reverses the scheme: an almost black indigo ground that pushes the pink and ivory palmettes forward and gives the whole rug a firm visual frame. Ivory guard stripes separate the bands and keep the two dark grounds from running together. In a room with warm wood floors the burgundy reads rich and traditional, while under cooler daylight the blues and teals come forward and the rug looks noticeably more jewel-toned.

Mashad Weaving in Khorasan

Mashad sits in Khorasan, in the far northeast of Persia, and has been the weaving capital of that province for centuries. Its workshops are known for large floor sizes, heavy lustrous wool from the surrounding highlands and the asymmetric Persian knot on a cotton foundation, which together give a Mashad its characteristic weight and its deep, plush handle underfoot. A signed piece means a workshop piece: the master who owned the loom put his name in the border because he was willing to be held to the result, and that is a meaningful marker in a market full of anonymous village work. The curvilinear vine drawing here needs a consistent knot count to hold its line over a field this wide, and the weave delivers it. Among large Persian rugs, a signed Mashad in excellent condition at this size is the kind of piece that stays in a family.