9'8" x 14' Persian Kashan Rug | Classic Floral Medallion | Dark Indigo Border | Excellent Condition

Opened out at 9'8" x 14', this hand-knotted Persian Kashan rug is the classic city formula worked at room-filling scale: a deep red field packed with flowering vine, a single ivory and navy medallion holding the center, and a wide dark indigo border closing the whole thing in. The 3/8" wool pile is full and even from end to end with no thin areas, the selvedges are intact, and the cream cotton fringe is clean at both ends. Condition is excellent. It ships with a certificate of authenticity recording origin, materials and measurements, so you have the weave documented in writing alongside the rug.

Design and Motifs

The drawing is built outward from a lobed medallion with a stepped, bracketed outline, its ivory ground carrying a turquoise cartouche and a small 8 petal rosette right at the center. A slim pendant finial runs off each end of the medallion into the field, and the 4 corners are filled with ivory spandrels drawn with the same blue blossoms and curling leaves, which gives the composition the open diamond shape typical of the town. Around that, the red field is not left empty for a moment: continuous vine scroll ties together rosettes, serrated palmettes, tulip heads and long curled leaves, with small cloudband flourishes tucked between the flower heads. The main indigo border alternates large palmettes with paired flowering sprays on a scrolling stem, and it is held by several narrow guard stripes, the widest of them a light blue band of repeating blossoms that gives the border real depth. Both ends of the border close cleanly, which tells you the weaver planned the layout rather than cutting it short at the finish.

A Deep Red Field Against Dark Indigo

The field is a saturated raspberry red that shifts with the light, reading almost cherry where the pile leans toward you and cooling toward a soft rose where it leans away, the natural luster you get from good Kashan wool. Against it, the border is a dark indigo so deep it passes for near black from across a room, and that contrast is what makes the piece read as formal rather than busy. The relief colors are the pleasure here: ivory in the medallion and spandrels, two clear blues (a bright turquoise in the rosettes and a softer sky blue in the wide guard stripe), sage and olive in the leaves, small touches of mustard gold in the border palmettes, and pale pink outlining that keeps every flower head legible. There is no abrash banding across the field, so the red stays consistent down the full 14'. Among red Persian rugs this one sits on the cooler, jewel-toned side of the family, which makes it easier to live with next to navy, charcoal and warm wood than a rust-red rug would be.

Kashan: The Town and the Weave

Kashan sits in central Persia, north of Isfahan, and its workshops trace their drawing straight back to the Safavid court tradition: curved vine, strict symmetry, and the familiar formula of a red field, a navy lobed medallion and ivory spandrels. It is the Persian rug most Americans have already seen without knowing its name, because when you watch Shark Tank there is a Persian Kashan on the floor. The local wool is soft and lustrous, which is why these rugs hold color and gain sheen with use, and the back of this one (image 6) shows a tight, regular knot grid on a cotton foundation, with the small ridges that come from a well-beaten weave rather than a loose village one. At this scale, Kashan weavers worked on wide looms with the design set by cartoon, and a piece this size took a long time on the loom. In the 10x14 Persian rugs group it is a genuinely useful footprint, covering a full seating arrangement or a long dining table without crowding the walls.