9'8" x 13'4" Persian Isfahan Najafabad Rug | Red Floral Medallion | Semi-Antique, Excellent Condition

This is a semi-antique Persian Isfahan Najafabad rug, hand-knotted in wool on a cotton foundation and measuring 9'8" x 13'4". Najafabad sits a short drive west of Isfahan and weaves the same classical drawing at a scale meant for real rooms, which is exactly what you get here: a formal lobed medallion floating on a warm red field, ivory spandrels at the 4 corners, and a wide midnight blue border carrying an unbroken procession of flowers. The pile stands at 3/8", still full and evenly worn across the whole field, and the selvedges and ivory fringe are intact. At this footprint it is one of the more useful 10x13 Persian rugs we carry, large enough to hold a full seating group or a 8 to 10 seat table. Every rug we ship leaves with a certificate of authenticity.

Design and Motifs

The layout is the classical city formula drawn with unusual density. A pointed, lobed medallion sits dead center, built in concentric rings: an ivory core holding a small 8 petal rosette, a navy cartouche ring set with curled leaves and blossoms, then a serrated ivory outline that throws pendants north and south. Around it the red ground is not left open for a moment. It is filled edge to edge with a flowering vine system of palmettes, rosettes, tulip heads and feathered acanthus leaves, each blossom outlined so the drawing stays legible instead of blurring into pattern. The spandrels repeat the medallion vocabulary in ivory and pale green, giving the eye a resting place at the 4 corners. The main border runs a navy ground with alternating large palmettes and bouquets on curving stems, flanked by 2 sets of ivory guard stripes carrying a small rosette and leaf meander, with a fine red outer stripe closing the composition. It is a rug that rewards standing over it.

A Red Field Against Midnight Blue and Ivory

The field is a warm brick red with a slight rose cast where the light catches the wool, and it carries the gentle tonal variation that comes from natural dye lots rather than a flat machine color. Against it the border reads almost black at a distance and resolves into deep midnight blue up close, which is what makes the ivory and cream blossoms inside it glow. Between those 2 poles the weaver worked a full secondary palette: sky and cornflower blue in the leaves, soft sage and olive green through the spandrels and vine work, camel and walnut brown in the stems, and touches of rose and coral in the smaller rosettes. Ivory appears three times over, in the medallion core, the spandrels and the guard stripes, tying the composition together. The overall effect is rich but not heavy, and it settles comfortably with warm woods, dark leather, brass and both cream and deep painted walls.

Najafabad and the Isfahan Weaving Tradition

Isfahan has been the drawing capital of Persia since the Safavid court workshops of the 16th century, and its reputation rests on line: the curved stem, the flowing vine, the precise blossom, all of which only hold together at a serious knot count. Najafabad, the weaving town just west of the city, inherited those cartoons and those standards and applied them to larger room-size formats that the city ateliers rarely attempted. The result is a rug with city-grade drawing and village-grade toughness, wool knotted firmly on a cotton warp and weft with a low, tight 3/8" pile that takes traffic well. The back shows straight, regular rows and clean color separation, the mark of an experienced workshop weaver following a cartoon rather than improvising. Semi-antique pieces of this quality in a true Persian Isfahan idiom and at 9'8" x 13'4" are getting harder to replace each year.