9'8" x 13'5" Persian Mashad Rug | Sheik Safi Design | 1980s Deep Red Wool

Woven in the 1980s in northeast Persia, this 9'8" x 13'5" room size piece carries the Sheik Safi drawing, one of the most demanding patterns a Khorasan workshop will attempt. The wool is glossy and the knotting is even from end to end, so the whole field holds a single tone rather than breaking into patches. It lies flat and square, the selvages are tight and the ends are original and complete. Anyone shopping 10x13 Persian rugs for a formal room is usually choosing between plain medallion layouts and something with real drawing behind it, and this sits firmly in the second group. If you want the background on the weave and the town, our guide to Persian Mashad rugs covers it in detail. The rug ships with a certificate of authenticity.

Design and Motifs

The Sheik Safi layout descends from the great shrine carpets of the Safavid period, and it is built outward rather than simply stamped in the middle. A lobed navy medallion sits at the center, filled with a small 8 petal rosette, hooked arabesques and paired birds worked so finely they only appear when you stand over them. From that medallion a ring of boteh cartouches radiates in every direction, each one outlined in teal and peacock blue and filled with a red or salmon flower head. Above and below the medallion hang pendant boteh with tiny finials, and beneath them a flowering vase rises out of the lower field, flanked by curling split leaves. The corners are not conventional spandrels; the vine simply keeps running, so the design reads as a medallion and an all-over pattern at the same time. The main border on navy carries alternating star rosettes and elongated palmette cartouches, framed by an ivory turtle palmette vine and two narrow rosette stripes on each side, 4 borders deep in total.

A Deep Red Field With Blue, Green and Ivory

The ground is a deep madder red that leans raspberry where the light catches the pile and settles into a darker burgundy when the nap runs the other way, which is exactly what good Khorasan wool does. Against it the palette is unusually rich for a rug of this type: near black navy in the medallion and the main border, a clear peacock teal outlining every boteh, a lighter sky blue inside the border rosettes, and olive to moss green in the leaves and small vine work. Ivory does the structural work, carrying the guard border and picking out the outlines of the flower heads so the drawing stays legible across 13 feet. Scattered through the field are salmon, rose pink, soft gold and a warm camel, all in small quantities, so the rug stays a red and navy piece from across the room and only reveals how many colors it actually uses up close.

Mashad and the Khorasan Weaving Tradition

Mashad is the capital of Khorasan in the far northeast of Persia and the country's great pilgrimage city, which is precisely why its workshops specialized in large formal formats: the demand was for rugs that could cover the floors of substantial rooms without the pattern falling apart at scale. Khorasan wool is long stapled and takes madder red better than almost any other Persian wool, which is why Mashad reds have that particular depth and why they age into a glow instead of going dull. The weavers there work on a cotton foundation with a Persian knot, and on a piece this size the discipline shows in the straight borders, the consistent medallion geometry and the fact that the boteh on the left match the boteh on the right across nearly 10 feet of width. This example is a well made 1980s workshop rug in full pile, the kind of Mashad that will still be doing its job in a dining room or a large living room decades from now.