9'8" x 13'3" Persian Kashan Rug | Red Field, Navy Medallion, Ivory Spandrels | 1980s Wool

This is the classic city formula done properly: a deep red field, a navy lobed medallion, ivory corner spandrels and a wide navy main border, hand-knotted in wool on a cotton foundation in central Persia in the 1980s. The pile is a full 3/8", even across the whole 9'8" x 13'3" surface, with no low spots, no repairs and clean selvages and fringes, which is why it grades excellent. Anyone shopping a Persian Kashan rug at room size will recognize the drawing immediately, and at close range the small scale of the flowers tells you how tight the weave underneath is. It ships with a certificate of authenticity confirming origin, materials and hand-knotted construction.

Design and Motifs

A stepped navy medallion sits dead center, built in layers: an ivory inner cartouche holding a sky blue rosette, then a navy ring of palmettes and curling leaves, then hooked outlines that step out to 4 points and finish in slender pendants top and bottom. The field around it is not left plain. It is filled edge to edge with flowering vines, small lotus heads, tulips, 8 petal rosettes and feathery lanceolate leaves, all drawn small and all curvilinear, so the eye never runs out of things to follow. The corner spandrels repeat the medallion's navy ground and ivory outline, framing the field cleanly at all 4 corners. The main border carries large palmettes linked by arabesque vine on navy, flanked by ivory and light blue guard stripes with their own running rosette chains, and a fine outer meander closes the composition.

The Red, Navy, Green and Ivory Palette

The field red is a true madder red with a slight cool cast, deep rather than bright, and it reads differently depending on where you stand because the wool takes light along the nap. Against it the navy is almost black at the border edge and lifts to a clear indigo inside the medallion. The third color doing the real work is a soft sky blue, scattered through the flower heads and used solid in the small center rosette and in one of the guard stripes, which keeps the whole rug from going heavy. Ivory appears in the spandrels, the medallion core and the thin outlines that separate every motif, and that outlining is what makes the pattern legible at 13 feet away. Green shows up as olive and sage in the leaves and vine stems, with rose pink, camel and a rust brown filling in the smaller blossoms. The back, visible in the photographs, shows the same colors clean and unfaded straight through.

Kashan, Central Persia, and the Weave

Kashan lies in central Persia north of Isfahan and has been weaving on a court workshop standard since the Safavid period. Its advantage has always been the local wool, soft and lustrous, which is why a Kashan of this age still feels full underfoot after four decades. The knotting here is fine enough to carry curved vine work and small flower heads without them turning blocky, which is the difference between a city Kashan and a village copy of one. This is also the design most Americans have seen without knowing its name: when you watch Shark Tank there is a Persian Kashan on the floor. At 9'8" x 13'3" it belongs in a room where furniture sits fully on the rug, and buyers cross-shopping 10x13 Persian rugs will find few in this condition with the pile still this deep.