9'7" x 12'8" Persian Kashan Rug | Red Floral Medallion Field | Semi Antique, Excellent Condition

This is a classic room size Persian Kashan rug, hand-knotted in wool on a cotton foundation and finished at a 3/8" pile that still stands evenly from border to border. At 9'7" x 12'8" it sits squarely in the most useful of all traditional proportions, which is why so many buyers searching 10x13 Persian rugs end up on a piece like this one: enough length to float a sofa and two chairs, enough width to seat a 10 seat table with the chairs still on wool. The weave is tight and flat, the selvedges are sound, and the cotton fringe is full and original, as the close photograph of the reverse shows. Condition is excellent with no repairs, no stains and no open areas. Every rug we ship travels with a certificate of authenticity confirming origin, materials and hand-knotted construction.

Design and Motifs

The layout is the formal Kashan arrangement: a small lobed centerpiece on a navy ground, ringed by a large oval of dense floral tracery, with matching quarter spandrels anchoring the 4 corners. The medallion core is a gold cartouche holding an 8 petal rosette, framed by curling split leaves and pink rosettes that read clearly in the close-up. Away from the medallion the field never goes quiet: scrolling vines carry palmettes, serrated leaves, carnations and tiny bud sprays in every direction, with pendant finials dropping from the medallion toward each end. The main border is a boteh and palmette procession on near black navy, the large paisley forms alternating with ivory and rose blossoms, and it is held between narrow ivory guard stripes of running vine. Three thinner bands repeat inside the field edge, so the eye steps from border to field in graded layers rather than one hard jump. The drawing is curvilinear throughout, with the sort of long sweeping vine lines that only hold their shape in a well drawn workshop cartoon.

Color Palette

The field is a true crimson red, slightly cool and raspberry leaning in daylight, and it is the loudest color in the rug by design, which makes this one of the easier red and burgundy Persian rugs to build a room around. Against it the border is a deep inky navy, dark enough to read as near black from standing height, which is what gives the rug its weight on a pale floor. Between field and border run bands of clean ivory that brighten the whole perimeter. The detail work is where the other colors live: soft powder blue and steel blue in the leaf scrolls, olive and sage green in the small leaves and paisley centers, warm saffron gold and burnt orange in the medallion and spandrel grounds, and pale rose to blush pink in the rosettes. There are small flecks of cream and chocolate brown in the vine work. The wool takes light well, so the red shifts from bright carmine where the pile leans one way to a deeper claret where it leans the other.

Origin and Weaving Quality

Kashan sits in central Persia, north of Isfahan, and its reputation goes back to the Safavid court workshops, where the city was known for soft lustrous local wool and for precise curvilinear drawing. The formula seen here, a red field with a navy medallion and bordered ivory guard stripes, is the pattern most people picture when they picture a Persian rug at all. When you watch Shark Tank there is a Persian Kashan on the floor. This example is a workshop weave rather than village work: the knotting is even across the full 115" width, the vine lines stay smooth through the curves, and the back shows regular, compact rows with no slack or wandering. The 3/8" pile has been clipped low in the Kashan manner so the pattern stays sharp instead of blurring, and the wool has the dense springy handle that comes from a tightly beaten foundation. For a rug of this size and age the abrash is minimal and the pile is uniform, which points to good quality yarn and a weaver working steadily from a single dye lot.