9'8" x 13'3" Persian Kashan Rug | Ivory Medallion on Deep Red Floral Field | Fine Wool Pile, Excellent Condition

This is the drawing that made Persian Kashan rugs the benchmark for formal floral weaving: a tomato red field packed with vine work, a navy lobed medallion holding an ivory and sky blue center, and four navy spandrels that square off the corners. At 9'8" x 13'3" it covers a full living room or seats a 10 seat dining table with the chairs pulled back, which puts it squarely among 10x13 Persian rugs in practical terms. The pile is wool at 3/8", still upright and even, on a cotton foundation, and the condition is excellent with no repairs and no thin areas. Every rug we sell ships with a certificate of authenticity recording origin, materials, size and knotting.

Design and Motifs

The layout is the classic Kashan formula drawn with real discipline. A navy lobed medallion sits dead center, stepped and pointed at top and bottom, with an ivory cartouche inside it framing a pale blue rosette core. Fine pendants reach out from the medallion into the field, and the field itself is not left open: it is filled edge to edge with scrolling vines, split leaves, curling palmettes and small rosettes that lean and turn so no two repeats read the same. The 4 corner spandrels are navy, matched to the medallion, each one carrying an ivory arabesque curl that lifts the corners visually. The border system runs 7 bands deep, with a wide navy main border of alternating palmettes and vase-like floral cartouches, flanked by ivory and pale blue guard stripes and an outer meander in red. The corners of that main border resolve cleanly, which is the first thing to check on a curvilinear rug and the quickest tell of a weaver who knew the cartoon.

Color: Tomato Red, Deep Navy and Ivory

The ground is a bright tomato red, warm rather than brick, and it reads slightly lighter where the pile leans toward the light, as the detail photographs show. Against it the medallion and borders are a near black navy that gives the whole rug its structure and keeps the red from shouting. Inside the medallion the palette softens into ivory, cream and a chalky sky blue, and that same sky blue is scattered through the field in small leaves and rosette centers, which is what stops the design from going flat. Secondary notes include olive green in the leaves, a muted gold in the palmettes, a soft rose pink in the smaller flowers and touches of pure white in the vine outlines. Ivory guard stripes and ivory corner arabesques carry the light all the way out to the selvage. In a room with warm wood floors or cream walls, the red field acts as the anchor and the navy border frames it like a mat around a picture.

Kashan: Central Persia and the Weave

Kashan sits in central Persia, north of Isfahan, and its weaving pedigree runs back to the Safavid court workshops. The town built its name on two things: soft, lustrous local wool that takes dye deeply and holds a sheen for decades, and the red field, navy lobed medallion and ivory spandrel formula seen here, repeated and refined until it became the design most people picture when they picture a Persian rug. When you watch Shark Tank there is a Persian Kashan on the floor. On this piece the back photograph tells the rest of the story: small, square, tightly packed knots on a cotton foundation, with the border detail resolving at full clarity, which is only possible at a knot count fine enough to draw a curve without breaking it into steps. The 3/8" pile is the right height for a room-size floral, short enough to keep the drawing crisp and dense enough to take daily traffic in a living or dining room for another generation.