9'7" x 13' Persian Kerman Rug | Red Shah Abbas Floral Field, Ivory Garden Border | Excellent Condition

At 9'7" x 13" this is a full room-size Kerman, and it is drawn the way the good Kerman workshops draw: every line curved, nothing angular, the field covered edge to edge in flowering vine with a single lobed medallion floating at the center. The pile is wool clipped to about 3/8 inch, tight enough to hold the small flower heads crisply, knotted on a cotton foundation, and the back photograph shows an even, well-packed weave with no repairs or reweaves. Condition is excellent, with full pile, straight sides and original ends. If you are comparing 10x13 Persian rugs for a living room or a formal dining table, this one covers the floor without leaving the design stranded under furniture. Every rug we ship leaves with a certificate of authenticity identifying origin, materials and hand-knotted construction.

Design and Motifs

The center holds a long lobed medallion with stepped shoulders and small pendant finials top and bottom, filled with a rosette core, paired scrolling leaves and Shah Abbas palmettes. Around it the red ground is worked in an all over pattern of open rose heads, carnation sprays, small 8 petal rosettes, tulips and serrated leaves, each stem drawn individually rather than repeated by stencil, so the field reads as a garden in bloom rather than a grid. Quarter medallions anchor the 4 corners of the field, and small cartouche-shaped devices punctuate the inner ground. The border system is the most Kerman thing about the rug: a wide ivory main border filled with flowering trees, cypress and weeping willow forms and small perched birds, framed by narrow pink and celadon guard stripes of running vine, with deep red corner medallions carrying large rosettes. Detail photographs show the drawing holding its accuracy right through the corner turns, which is where lesser weaving falls apart.

The Color Palette in Detail

The field is a true Persian red, deep and slightly cool, closer to tomato than to burgundy, and it is the anchor that makes everything else read as light. Against it the flowers are worked in ivory, bone white, soft coral, apricot, wheat gold, powder blue, navy and two greens, a sage and a darker olive, so the field carries far more color than a quick glance suggests. The medallion is the palest note in the rug, a celadon green-grey ground with an ivory and wheat center, coral serrated leaves and small blue and rose flower heads, which lifts it clearly off the red without shouting. The main border shifts to ivory and warm cream with the trees drawn in rust, olive, sage and soft blue, while the corner medallions return to a deeper red that ties the border back to the field. The narrow guard stripes add rose pink and pale blue-green, and navy outlining throughout keeps each element separated. Buyers shopping red and burgundy Persian rugs will find this one warm but not dark, and easy to live with against wood floors, cream walls and both traditional and transitional furniture.

Kerman Origin and Weaving Quality

Kerman sits in southeast Persia, isolated on the edge of the desert, and that isolation is part of why its weaving developed its own signature: fully curvilinear drawing, a designer's cartoon behind every rug, and pictorial garden borders filled with flowering trees and birds instead of the geometric repeats used in village work further north. Kerman weavers work on a cotton foundation with a soft, high-luster local wool that takes dye cleanly, which is what allows the pale celadon and coral tones here to sit beside a saturated red without muddying. The weave on this piece is dense and regular, with the wool clipped low so the fine flower heads and the thin vine stems stay legible, and the selvages and ends are finished by hand in the traditional way. It belongs to the classic town workshop tradition of Persian Kerman rugs: formal, meticulously drawn, and built on a foundation that will carry decades of use in a busy room.