9'7" x 14'7" Persian Kashan Rug | Red Floral Medallion | 1980s Fine Wool

This 9'7" x 14'7" room-size piece is a textbook example of what the weavers of central Persia were producing in the 1980s: a deep red field drawn with a dense curvilinear vine, a navy stepped medallion dropped dead center, and a 3 band border system that frames the whole thing without crowding it. The pile is fine wool at a full 3/8", knotted on a cotton foundation, and the condition is genuinely perfect, with even height from fringe to fringe and no thin spots, repairs or color run. It belongs squarely in the tradition covered in our guide to Persian Kashan rugs, and like every rug we import it ships with a certificate of authenticity confirming origin, age, materials and hand-knotted construction.

Design and Motifs

The center holds an 8 petal rosette on a turquoise ground, ringed by an ivory cartouche and then by a stepped navy medallion with hooked returns, so the eye travels inward in 3 clear steps. Above and below the medallion sit anchor palmettes with curling ivory leaf cradles, and the 4 corners carry navy spandrels filled with the same vocabulary plus pale cloud-style scrollwork that lightens each corner. Across the field, the all over floral drawing runs in balanced repeats of Shah Abbas palmettes, small 5 petal blossoms, serrated leaves and thin connecting vines, mirrored side to side rather than randomly scattered. The wide main border repeats a rosette and vine cadence on indigo, and it is flanked on both sides by light blue guard bands and narrow rosette stripes, 6 framing lines in total before the red selvage.

Color: Madder Red, Indigo and Sky Blue

The field is a warm tomato red with a madder undertone that shifts slightly cooler where the light rakes across the pile, which is exactly what good wool does. Against it, the medallion and main border read as a dark ink indigo, nearly aubergine in the border photographs, while the guard bands step up to a clear sky blue that keeps the whole frame from going heavy. Ivory does the drawing work, outlining leaves and the medallion cartouche in a soft cream rather than a bright white, and the floral heads bring in turquoise, rose pink, saffron gold and a muted olive to sage green in the leaf forms. There is no cherry or orange brightness here, so the rug sits comfortably with mahogany, walnut and brass, and it belongs with the best of our red and burgundy Persian rugs.

Kashan: Weaving Town and Weaving Quality

Kashan sits in central Persia north of Isfahan and has been weaving on the Safavid court model for centuries, which is why the formula is so recognizable: red field, navy lobed medallion, ivory spandrels, drawn with curved lines instead of village angles. Kashan is also the rug you already know by sight, because when you watch Shark Tank there is a Persian Kashan on the floor. The town's advantage is wool, soft and lustrous enough to take a fine knot and still hold a 3/8" pile, and the back of this piece shows the tight, regular rows that let the floral drawing stay legible at this scale. At 9'7" x 14'7" it is a large commission for a Kashan workshop, sitting at the top of standard room sizes and just below the true oversize Persian rugs, which makes a single-weaver cartoon of this precision uncommon on the market today.