9'8" x 13' Persian Mashad Rug | Burgundy Field, Navy Floral Borders | Dense Wool, Excellent Condition

A rug of this footprint with this much drawing packed into it is not an everyday find. The field of this 9'8" x 13' piece is a deep burgundy red, filled corner to corner with small floral sprays, curling vine and serrated leaves, and pulled together by a navy lobed medallion at the center. The pile is a dense 3/8" wool, cut low and even, so the small flowers stay legible rather than blurring into the ground. It is a classic workshop format from the tradition of Persian Mashad rugs in Khorasan, and it sits squarely in the 10x13 Persian rugs class, large enough to carry a full seating group or a dining table with all chairs pulled out. It ships with a certificate of authenticity stating origin, materials and size.

Design and Motifs

The center holds a navy lobed medallion with a layered rosette at its heart, worked in camel gold, teal and ivory, with slender pendants reaching up and down the length of the rug. Around it the burgundy field runs as a true all over composition: palmettes, 8 petal rosettes, tulip and carnation heads, split leaves and thin vine scroll, each motif outlined so it reads cleanly against the ground. The 4 corners carry navy spandrels on a camel gold ground, repeating the arabesque of the medallion at a larger scale. Framing all of it are 5 bands: a wide navy main border of yellow outlined arabesque and palmettes, a pair of mid blue guard stripes set with repeating rosettes, and narrow ivory minor stripes that act as a bright line between the dark bands. The drawing is fully curvilinear, with no straight geometric shortcuts anywhere in the layout.

Burgundy, Navy and Ivory Up Close

Burgundy is the anchor. The field is a saturated wine red that shifts toward raspberry where the light catches the nap and settles into a darker claret when viewed from the other end, the usual abrash and sheen of good Khorasan wool. The blues do the structural work and come in two registers: a deep indigo navy in the medallion, spandrels and main border, and a lighter mid blue, almost a soft denim, in the guard stripes and in many of the flower heads. Ivory and cream outline the vines and fill the narrow minor stripes, which keeps the dark bands from reading heavy. Supporting tones appear in small quantities and are easy to miss from a distance: camel gold in the spandrel grounds, olive green in the leaves, teal in the rosette petals, soft rose pink in the buds, and a few warm brown and tan notes among the palmettes. It is a cool toned red overall, so it sits comfortably with navy upholstery, dark wood and brass.

Mashad, Khorasan and the Weaving Quality

Mashad sits in Khorasan, in the far northeast of Persia, and is the one Persian weaving city best known for large formal room sizes built on cotton warps with a finely drawn floral layout. The local wool is long stapled and takes dye deeply, which is why Mashad reds hold their depth instead of flattening out over decades. This piece shows the city's habits plainly: a tight, regular knotting on a cotton foundation visible from the back, a firm handle with real weight to it, a low clipped pile that favors detail over plushness, and selvedges and fringe that have stayed intact. A curvilinear all over field like this one cannot be woven at a coarse count, since every vine turn and petal edge has to resolve in a few knots, and the clarity of the drawing here is the best evidence of the knot density behind it. The condition is excellent, with even pile across the whole surface.