9'8" x 12'5" Persian Mashad Rug | Telemagenta Floral Medallion | Fine Khorasan Wool Weave

A full room-size floor at 9'8" x 12'5", this hand-knotted Mashad carries the look that made Khorasan weaving famous: one commanding medallion floating in a field so densely drawn that you keep finding new flowers in it. The pile is a close-cropped 3/8" wool on a cotton foundation, firm underfoot and still carrying its original luster, with crisp selvedges and clean cotton fringe at both ends. Condition is excellent, with no repairs, no reweaves and even pile from end to end. Like every piece we import, it ships with a certificate of authenticity listing origin, materials and measurements. Among 9x12 Persian rugs this is the colorway buyers usually hunt for and rarely find in a piece this clean.

Design and Motifs

The center holds a lobed jet black medallion with a blush rose core, built in layers: an 8 petal rosette at the very middle, then a ring of serrated palmettes, then a toothed black outline that reads almost like a crown. A tall pendant drops from the top and bottom of the medallion into the open field, and 4 corners carry matching spandrels drawn in the same black, so the eye reads a clear diamond across the whole rug. Everything between is covered in a fine arabesque vine scroll loaded with small rosettes, cypress leaves, split palmettes and curling cloudband tendrils, drawn at a much smaller scale than the medallion so the composition stays legible instead of busy. The main border is a black ground filled with large boteh paisley and palmette cartouches, framed on both sides by ivory guard stripes of linked flower heads and a narrow red outer edge. The drawing is the curvilinear workshop type rather than village geometry, with the vine running true around the corners.

The Telemagenta, Ivory and Jet Black Palette

The field is telemagenta, a saturated raspberry red that tips toward pink where the light catches the clipped wool and settles into a deep cherry tone in shadow. It is the reason this rug has presence in a room, and it is a color Mashad looms produce better than most. Against it the designers set jet black for the medallion, the spandrels and the wide main border, which is what gives the rug its graphic punch and keeps the pink from going sweet. Inside those black grounds the detail work opens up into a wide spectrum: blush rose and salmon in the medallion core, powder blue and teal in the small rosettes, olive and moss green in the leaves, soft gold and camel in the palmettes, plus chalk ivory outlines that trace nearly every motif. The guard stripes and the inner border run on clean ivory, and a narrow band of brick orange sits just inside the main border as a transition. Cotton fringe at both ends stays bright white.

Mashad, Khorasan and the Weave

Mashad sits in Khorasan in the northeast corner of Persia, a pilgrimage city with a long commercial weaving trade and a reputation for large formal medallion rugs in deep reds. The local wool is long-stapled and takes dye beautifully, which is why Mashad reds hold their depth for generations instead of going flat. This piece is woven on the Persian knot with a cotton warp and weft, and the back shown against the ruler is tight, even and regular, with straight rows and no pull or waviness along the edges, the mark of a shop loom rather than a hurried commercial run. The 3/8" pile has been clipped low enough to let that fine vine work read clearly, which is the whole point of Mashad drawing. For more on how these rugs are built and how to judge one, read our guide to Persian Mashad rugs.