9'8" x 12'8" Persian Kashan Rug | Berry Red Floral Medallion | Signed Cartouche

This is a full room size Persian Kashan, hand-knotted in wool on a cotton foundation, with a deep berry red field, an indigo medallion and a wide navy main border framed by ivory guard stripes. The weaver signed the piece: a small script cartouche sits in the plain red band at the top of the field, just below the fringe, which is the mark of a workshop that stood behind the work. The pile is an even 3/8", the sides and ends are original and tight, and at 9'8" x 12'8" the rug covers a standard 10 by 13 floor plan with room for furniture legs on all 4 sides. Every rug we ship carries a certificate of authenticity. If you want the background before you buy, our guide to Persian Kashan rugs covers the design tradition in detail, and you can compare it against our other 10x13 Persian rugs.

Design and Motifs

The drawing follows the classic Kashan formula and executes it cleanly. A lobed indigo medallion sits dead center, built in tiers: an ivory core holding a small sky blue rosette, a ring of scrolling split leaf arabesques in rose and camel, and a serrated outer contour picked out in ivory. Pendant finials run north and south from the medallion, ending in small palmette caps, and 4 corner spandrels in ivory and navy repeat the same vocabulary at reduced scale. Between them the field is not left empty, which is what lifts this piece: an all over floral lattice of curling vines, feathered leaves, 8 petal rosettes and open palmettes covers the red ground edge to edge, drawn in curvilinear line rather than village angles. The main border carries alternating boteh and palmette cartouches on a navy ground, flanked by ivory vine guard bands with reciprocal turtle scroll, and a narrow rose and blue minor stripe finishes the edge.

A Deep Berry Red Field With Indigo and Ivory

The ground color is the strongest thing in the room: a deep, saturated berry red that leans slightly cool, closer to ripe raspberry than to brick or tomato, with the natural abrash of hand-dyed wool giving it depth rather than flatness. Against it the medallion, spandrels and main border read as a near black indigo, so the contrast is high and the medallion holds its shape from across the room. Ivory does the connecting work, in the guard borders, the medallion core and the spandrel grounds, and it keeps the red and navy from closing in on each other. The floral filling brings a wider palette in small doses: soft rose and salmon petals, sky blue and teal leaf tips, olive green stems, camel and warm caramel outlines, with occasional chartreuse and chocolate brown in the border cartouches. Under lamplight the wool takes a low sheen and the red warms; in daylight the blues come forward.

Kashan: Central Persia and Its Weaving Standard

Kashan sits in central Persia north of Isfahan and has woven on a workshop model since the Safavid court period, which is why the design here is curvilinear and symmetrical rather than improvised, and why the medallion, spandrels and border all resolve exactly where they should. The city's reputation rests on soft lustrous local wool and on the red field, navy lobed medallion and ivory spandrel formula that most Americans recognize without knowing the name: when you watch Shark Tank there is a Persian Kashan on the floor. This example is town workshop work on a cotton foundation, knotted tight enough to hold the fine vine scroll and the small rosettes without the line breaking up, and the 3/8" pile is left short so the drawing stays crisp. Wool of this grade compacts and burnishes with traffic instead of wearing thin, which is why signed Kashans from this tradition are still being bought and sold two and three generations after they came off the loom.