9'8" x 13'4" Persian Kashan Rug | Red & Dark Indigo Floral Medallion | Pure Wool Pile

This is a classic room-size Kashan in the format that made the city famous: a deep red field carrying a dense all-over scroll of flowers, a lobed indigo and ivory medallion anchoring the center, and a wide dark indigo main border framing the whole thing. The wool has the soft, faintly lustrous handle that good Kashan fleece develops, the 3/8" pile is even from end to end, and the ivory cotton fringe and selvages are clean and intact. At 9'8" x 13'4" it covers a full formal room without crowding it, and it is one of the better-balanced examples in our stock of 10x13 Persian rugs. Every rug we sell, including this one, ships with a certificate of authenticity recording origin, materials and measurements.

Design and Motifs

The drawing follows the full Kashan formula without shortcuts. At the center sits a stepped, lobed medallion: an ivory core holding a small 8 petal rosette and a teal cruciform device, wrapped by a dark indigo surround filled with pale rosettes, tulip buds and tiny palmettes, then finished with a cusped outline and vertical pendants reaching toward each end. Around it the red ground is covered edge to edge with a continuous vine carrying curved palmettes, serrated leaves, carnations and multi-color rosettes, so there is no empty ground anywhere in the field. Deep indigo spandrels close the 4 corners with their own floral sprays and ivory cloud bands. The border system runs 5 bands deep: a broad indigo main border of linked palmettes and tulips on a sweeping vine, flanked by sky blue and ivory guard stripes of small reciprocal blossoms, with a narrow red outer stripe. The detail photographs show how finely the ivory outlines are drawn, which is where a real Kashan separates itself from a copy.

Color: Deep Red Field, Dark Indigo Frame

The field is a deep, slightly cool red with a faint rose cast where the light catches the pile, the shade that puts this piece squarely among traditional red and burgundy Persian rugs. Against it, the main border and the medallion surround read as a very dark indigo, close to midnight blue, which is what gives the rug its weight and keeps the busy field from feeling restless. The accents do the real work: soft ivory in the medallion core, spandrel outlines and guard stripes; clear sky blue and teal in the rosette centers and the inner guard band; dusty rose and salmon in the smaller blossoms; and warm gold, apricot and olive scattered through the leaves and palmettes. A few flowers carry pale pink and light brown, so the palette stays varied in close view while resolving to red and dark blue from across the room.

Kashan: The City and the Weave

Kashan sits in central Persia, north of Isfahan, and its weaving goes back to the Safavid court workshops. The city's reputation rests on three things: soft, lustrous local wool, disciplined curvilinear drawing kept to a strict cartoon, and the formula of red field, lobed navy medallion and ivory spandrels that the rest of the world now reads as the archetypal Persian rug. When you watch Shark Tank there is a Persian Kashan on the floor. This example is a true town weave on a cotton foundation with a tight, flat back, close enough in knot count to hold the fine ivory outlines and palmette tips you can see in the medallion close-up, and dense enough to take decades of traffic in a dining room or a living room. If you want the background on how these rugs are built and graded, read our Persian Kashan rugs guide.