9'8" x 13' Persian Mashad Rug | Burgundy Field with Blue Star Medallion | 1980s Workshop Weave

This is a full room-size piece from the 1980s, hand-knotted in wool on a cotton foundation in the classic manner of Persian Mashad rugs. At 9'8" x 13" the drawing has room to breathe: one layered star medallion holds the center and the burgundy field around it is filled edge to edge with flowering vinework, so the rug reads formal from the doorway and detailed when you stand over it. The pile is still full and even, the selvedges are intact and the fringe is clean, which is what you want to see on a weave of this age. It sits comfortably among 10x13 Persian rugs for a living room or a long dining table. Every rug we sell ships with a certificate of authenticity confirming it is hand-knotted, its origin and its materials.

Design and Motifs

The center is a 16 point star set in orange and teal, ringed by a blue medallion carrying ivory palmettes and curling cloud-band tips, with 4 ivory boteh forms pointing out at the diagonals. Above and below the medallion sit small pendant cartouches, and the field itself is an all-over floral composition of 8 petal rosettes, split palmettes, serrated leaves and thin vines that mirror top to bottom. The 4 corners are filled with navy spandrels drawn in the same vocabulary, each closed off by a camel scrollwork cartouche. Three borders frame the work: a navy main border with alternating rosettes and lotus sprays on a red vine, flanked by camel guard stripes of connected blossoms, then a narrow reciprocal zigzag outer stripe. The close-up photographs show how cleanly the outlines are drawn, with single-knot ivory contour lines keeping each flower crisp against the ground.

Burgundy, Blue and Camel: The Color Story

The field is a deep wine burgundy that leans raspberry where the light hits the pile and darkens toward oxblood in the shadows, placing it squarely with the burgundy Persian rugs collectors look for in a formal room. Against it the medallion and spandrels are a strong mid blue over navy, with a saffron orange heart at the very center that acts as the single bright point in the whole rug. The borders change the temperature completely: a camel to golden tan that photographs almost honey in the corner shots, carrying olive, yellow, rose pink, sky blue and soft teal flowers. Ivory and cream do the outlining throughout and keep the burgundy from going heavy, while small notes of black, apricot and deep rose appear in the rosette centers. Natural abrash, the gentle banding typical of hand-dyed wool, shows across the field in the floor photographs and gives the red its depth.

Mashad: Khorasan Weaving in the Shrine City

Mashad is the great city of Khorasan in northeast Persia, a pilgrimage center whose workshops have supplied room-size medallion rugs for well over a century. Khorasan wool is long-stapled and takes dye beautifully, which is why Mashad reds hold that saturated wine tone instead of fading flat, and why the pile here still has body and sheen after decades. A curvilinear star medallion with a mirrored floral field is the house formula, drawn from a cartoon rather than from memory, and keeping those curved vines true across almost 13 feet of length takes a disciplined loom and a steady pair of weavers. This piece is a solid workshop-grade example of that tradition in a practical large format, dense enough underfoot for daily traffic and quiet enough in its drawing to live with furniture on top of it.