9'9" x 12'6" Persian Mashad Rug | Signed Cartouche | Red Field, Lobed Floral Medallion

A signature in the upper border is the first thing to look at on this Persian Mashad rug, because a woven cartouche means a workshop piece rather than an anonymous market weaving: a named weaver put his name on the loom's work and had to answer for the drawing and the knotting. At 9'9" x 12'6" it is a full room rug, hand-knotted in wool on a cotton foundation with a 3/8" pile that still stands up evenly across the whole field, and it arrives in excellent condition with a certificate of authenticity from Rugs.net confirming origin, materials and hand-knotted construction.

Design and Motifs

The layout is the classic Mashad formula, drawn with more care than most. A lobed medallion sits dead center on an indigo ground, with a salmon inner cartouche and a small 8 petal rosette at the very heart, and it finishes top and bottom in slender pendants that reach out toward the ends of the field. Around it the red ground is filled edge to edge with palmettes, rosettes, curled saz leaves and thin arabesque vines that curve rather than turn corners, so the eye keeps moving instead of stopping on a repeat. The 4 corners carry heavy dark spandrels packed with the same floral vocabulary, which frames the medallion and squares off the field. The border system runs 7 bands deep: a broad indigo main border of alternating palmettes and cartouches, flanked by ivory and rose guard stripes of running vine, then narrow reciprocal stripes that step the pattern down to the deep red outer edge.

Color: Madder Red Ground Against Indigo and Ivory

The field is a deep madder red that reads warmer and slightly rose in raking light and darker, almost brick, where the pile lies away from you, which is the natural abrash and sheen of good Khorasan wool rather than any irregularity. Against it the medallion and spandrels are a near black indigo, dense enough to give the red something hard to push against. The detail work is where the color count opens up: salmon and terracotta in the medallion, soft sage and olive green in the leaves, pale sky blue and mid indigo in the small rosettes, and a warm ivory that outlines the vinework and lights the guard borders. Rose, camel and touches of clear yellow appear in the border cartouches. Overall it reads as a red and navy rug from across a room, then resolves into a genuinely multi-colored piece at conversational distance.

Mashad Weaving in Khorasan

Mashad sits in Khorasan in northeast Persia, a pilgrimage city with a long workshop tradition and access to some of the best long staple wool in the country. That wool is why Mashad rugs take dye the way they do and why the pile keeps its luster for decades of use. The weave here is fine and even for a room size piece, with the curved drawing of the medallion outline and the unbroken vine scroll only possible on a well set loom with an experienced weaver behind it, and the signature in the border tells you the workshop stood behind that work. Buyers shopping 10x13 Persian rugs will find few in this size that combine a signed cartouche, an unworn 3/8" pile and a color range this broad.