9'8" x 13'5" Persian Kerman Rug | Navy Floral Medallion | 1980s Hand-Knotted Wool

A deep midnight navy ground is unusual for Kerman, a town that built its name on ivory and rose, and it is exactly what makes this 1980s piece worth a second look. The wool has kept its shine, the pile is still full from selvage to selvage, and the drawing is crisp enough that you can follow every stem through the border. At 9'8" x 13'5" it sits in one of the most usable proportions we carry, wide enough to hold a full seating group and long enough to read as a floor rather than an island, which is why 10x13 Persian rugs remain the most requested size in our showroom. Every rug ships with a certificate of authenticity confirming origin, materials and hand-knotted construction.

Design and Motifs

The centre holds a large lobed medallion built entirely from flowers rather than geometry: open roses, tight buds, curling boteh paisleys and small palmettes layered until the shape reads as a bouquet pressed flat. Four spandrels answer it in the corners, and between them the navy field is left deliberately open, broken only by scattered floral sprays and single stems that give the eye somewhere to rest. The wide main border runs a continuous procession of upright paisleys alternating with rose clusters, each one outlined in ivory so it lifts off the dark ground, and slim floral guard stripes contain it on both sides. This is classic curvilinear Kerman drawing, every line drawn as a curve, no straight edges anywhere in the pattern.

Color: Midnight Navy with Rose, Ivory and Sage

The field is a true midnight indigo that shifts toward inky black where the pile lies away from the light and opens up to a clear blue where it leans toward it, the natural abrash and directional sheen of good hand-spun wool. Against it the palette is soft rather than loud: rose pink and salmon in the flower heads, a crimson core inside the larger paisleys, cream and ivory outlines, pale sky blue in the cone fillers, sage and olive green in the leaves, and warm camel tan through the vinework. Because the accents are pastel and the ground is dark, the rug reads calm from standing height and detailed up close, which is the great advantage of navy blue Persian rugs in rooms with light walls or pale upholstery.

Kerman: Weaving Town and Quality

Kerman sits in the far southeast of Persia, a city that has woven for the export trade longer than almost anywhere else and that specialised in floral and pictorial garden work while its neighbours went geometric. Kerman weavers use the asymmetric knot on a cotton foundation, which lets them turn a curve tightly and carry a drawn design faithfully from the cartoon to the loom, and this rug shows that discipline in its even knotting and straight selvages. The back seen in the folded corner is tight and legible, with clean rows and no repairs. The 1980s dating is consistent with the wool quality, the colour range and the finish of the fringe, and if you want to understand how weavers, dealers and collectors read those clues, our guide on how to date an Oriental rug walks through the same checks we ran on this piece.