9'9" x 12'10" Persian Mashad Rug | Signed All Over Floral | Fine Wool, Excellent Condition

This is a signed Persian Mashad rug, hand-knotted in wool on a cotton foundation and finished at a 3/8" pile that still stands full and even across the whole field. At 9'9" x 12'10" it belongs with the true room-size pieces, and it sits squarely in the group buyers search for as 10x13 Persian rugs. The weaver signed the piece in a cartouche woven into the top border, which is the mark of a workshop rug rather than an anonymous commercial run. Condition is excellent: full pile corner to corner, original selvages, clean white cotton fringe at both ends. Every rug we sell ships with a certificate of authenticity that records origin, materials and size.

Design and Motifs

There is no central medallion here. Instead the weaver filled the entire field with a classic all over floral design: palmettes, open rosettes, tulip and lotus heads, curled acanthus leaves and long boteh paisleys, all strung on thin navy vinework that loops back on itself so the eye never stops at one point. The drawing is mirrored top to bottom and left to right, with 4 corners resolved cleanly rather than cut off, which is a good sign of a drawn cartoon and a disciplined loom. Three borders frame the field: a wide navy main border carrying alternating ivory palmettes and rose-red blossoms, flanked by two narrower guard bands of running vine and small rosettes. An inner pearl-and-vine stripe separates border from field and keeps the busy field from spilling outward.

Color Palette

The ground is a saturated burgundy red that darkens toward wine in the daylight photographs and warms to a brick tone where the light catches the pile, the natural abrash you expect from good Khorasan wool. Against it the main border runs a near-black navy, deep enough to read as a solid frame from across a room. The flowers are drawn in ivory and soft cream, with rose pink, powder blue, cobalt, ochre gold and a quiet sage to olive green appearing in the leaf tips and small buds. Outlining is done in dark navy and charcoal, which is what gives each palmette its sharp edge against the red. The overall effect is formal and deep rather than bright, and it works with mahogany and walnut furniture, warm whites and cream plaster walls.

Mashad and the Khorasan Weaving Tradition

Mashad is the capital of Khorasan in northeast Persia, a pilgrimage city that has supported large urban workshops for generations and draws on some of the best sheep pasture in the country. Mashad weavers are known for glossy, long-staple wool, for deep madder reds, and for large formats woven to a single drawn cartoon, which is exactly what this piece is. A signature cartouche of the kind woven into this border is never decorative filler: it names the workshop or master responsible, and it means the rug was made under supervision rather than off the shelf. The knotting is regular and tight enough on the reverse to hold the fine vine scrolls without wobble, the handle is firm with the weight you want under furniture, and the wool has the slight sheen that makes a Mashad read richer in lamplight than it does in a photograph.