9'8" x 13'4" Persian Kashan Rug | Salmon Field, Navy Medallion | Semi-Antique, Excellent Condition

This is a room size 9'8" x 13'4" city weave from central Persia, worked entirely by hand in wool on a cotton foundation with a close 3/8" pile that still stands full and even across the whole field. It belongs to the classic family of Persian Kashan rugs, the formal medallion format that reads as dressy in a living room and perfectly balanced under a long dining table. The wool has the quiet sheen that only comes with decades of settling, the sides and ends are original, and the ivory fringe is clean and intact. Every rug we sell ships with a certificate of authenticity that records the origin, the materials and the hand-knotted construction.

Design and Motifs

The drawing is pure classical Kashan. A lobed navy medallion sits dead center, carrying an ivory cartouche filled with a blue 8 petal rosette and small rose and olive blossoms, and it is pinched at top and bottom into fine pendant finials. Around it the field is covered edge to edge with curling vine, slender serrated leaves, palmettes and small naturalistic flower sprays, all of it curvilinear and drawn with a steady hand rather than squared off. Two navy spandrel-shaped cartouches echo the medallion on the long axis, and the 4 corners are filled with ivory spandrels of dense scrolling arabesque. The main navy border runs an alternating sequence of large pink and olive palmettes joined by a continuous vine, framed on both sides by grey blue guard stripes and a running rosette minor border, with a narrow meander at the outer edge. Nothing in the layout is improvised, which is exactly what you want from a workshop piece of this period.

A Salmon Field Framed in Navy and Ivory

Color is the reason to buy this one. The field is salmon, a warm rose red softened toward coral, and it shifts gently as you walk around the rug because the wool takes light from two directions. Against it the medallion, the inner spandrel cartouches and the wide main border read as a deep navy that goes almost aubergine black in the corner shots. Ivory does the lifting: the center cartouche, the 4 corner spandrels and the narrow outer stripes all glow pale cream and keep the dark border from feeling heavy. Through the field and borders are flickers of grey blue, olive green, soft rose pink, caramel and gold in the small flower heads, which is what gives the surface its depth instead of a flat two tone look. The overall effect is warm and formal at once, and it sits easily with walnut and mahogany furniture, cream walls, brass, and upholstery in navy, moss or oatmeal.

Kashan: The Town and the Weave

Kashan sits in central Persia, north of Isfahan, and its weaving goes back to the Safavid court workshops. Local wool is soft and lustrous, and the town standardized a formula that has been copied everywhere since: a red or salmon field, a navy lobed medallion, ivory spandrels, and a palmette border. When you watch Shark Tank there is a Persian Kashan on the floor. The weave here is the typical fine Kashan city knotting, tight enough to carry a curved vine cleanly on a cotton warp and weft, and the back photograph with the ruler shows the even, regular knot rows that separate real town work from village copies. Among 10x13 Persian Kashan rugs, a piece this clean, with full pile and an unbroken field, is the version worth holding on to.