9'7" x 13'2" Persian Kashan Rug | Ivory Field, Blue Medallion | Signed Cartouche

This is the quiet, light version of the classic Kashan formula, and it is far harder to find than the red one. The field is ivory rather than madder red, the medallion is drawn in sky blue and taupe instead of navy on crimson, and the whole rug reads soft in daylight while the drawing stays crisp. It measures 9'7" x 13'2", a true room size that covers a seating group without crowding the walls, and it sits comfortably among 10x13 Persian rugs for planning purposes. A woven signature cartouche sits in the upper border, which tells you the piece left a named workshop rather than an anonymous loom, and the pile is full and even at 3/8" with no wear, no repair and no restoration. Every rug we sell ships with a certificate of authenticity that records origin, materials, knot construction and measurements. If you want the background on the type before you commit, our guide to Persian Kashan rugs covers the design vocabulary in detail.

Design and Motifs

The layout is the textbook Kashan arrangement executed with unusual patience. A lobed central medallion carries a stepped 8 point star at its core, ringed by a taupe cartouche field of small blossoms and finished top and bottom with stepped pendants. Around it the ivory ground is filled edge to edge with a curving vine system: split palmettes, open rosettes, tulip heads, serrated lancet leaves and paired birds tucked into the scroll where the vines cross. The 4 corner spandrels repeat the medallion's taupe ground so the composition closes cleanly, and each one is outlined in a fine navy line that keeps the curved drawing legible against the pale field. The border is built in 7 bands, a wide taupe main border of alternating palmettes and rosettes flanked by narrow guard stripes of running vine and reciprocal trefoils. Nothing in the field is mechanically repeated; the cartoon is mirrored rather than stamped, and the small variations in leaf and blossom are exactly what separates a workshop rug from a production piece.

Ivory, Blue and Taupe Coloring

The palette is the reason this rug works in a modern room. The field is a warm ivory with a faint cream cast, not a bleached white, so it sits well against oak, walnut and plaster. Drawn on top of it are two distinct blues: a deep navy that carries the vine outlines and the darkest flower centers, and a soft powder blue that fills the medallion, the larger palmettes and the guard stripes. Between them runs a broad band of taupe and greige that forms the medallion ground, the spandrels and the main border, giving the rug its overall sandy tone in a wide shot. The accents do the rest of the work: copper and rust in the rosette hearts, olive and sage in the leaves, small stabs of brick red at the very center of a few flowers, and clean ivory highlights inside the border cartouches. It is a low contrast rug read from across the room and a highly colorful one read from 3 feet away, which is a hard balance to strike in wool.

Kashan Weaving and Workshop Quality

Kashan lies in central Persia, north of Isfahan, and its looms trace back to the Safavid court workshops that produced the most famous carpets in the world. The town's advantage has always been its wool, a soft and lustrous local fleece that takes dye deeply and picks up a sheen underfoot, and its discipline, a formula of medallion, spandrel and vine field that master weavers refined for centuries rather than reinvented. That pedigree is why the type stays in the public eye: when you watch Shark Tank there is a Persian Kashan on the floor. This example is knotted on a cotton foundation with a tight, level back, visible in the ruler photograph, and the curvilinear drawing holds its line through the tightest scroll, which only happens at a genuinely fine knot count. The signature cartouche in the upper border places it with a named Kashan workshop, and at 9'7" x 13'2" with full pile and no restoration it is a piece to buy once and keep.