9'9" x 12'7" Persian Kerman Rug | Open Navy Field Medallion | 1980s Wool Pile

This is the kind of Kerman that sells itself across a room: an unbroken navy field, a single jewel of a medallion floating in the middle of it, and a border system that does all the talking at the edges. Woven in the 1980s in southeast Persia on a cotton foundation with a wool pile, the rug measures 9'9" x 12'7" and covers a genuine 10 by 13 footprint, which puts it squarely among the most useful 10x13 Persian rugs for a full seating group. The pile is still deep and even, the ends and sides are sound, and the colors have settled into that mellow, slightly powdery softness that only real age gives. It ships with a certificate of authenticity from Rugs.net.

Design and Motifs

The drawing is classic Kerman open field: an oval reserve of plain navy left deliberately bare so the eye travels straight to the center. The medallion is a layered cusped rosette in ivory, celadon and salmon, built around an 8 petal flower head, with a serrated teal outline and small anchor pendants running north and south. Around the reserve runs a wreath of curling boteh, cypress tips and split palmettes, each outlined in a single row of dark knots so the shapes read crisply against the navy. The wide main border carries a salmon ground packed with paisley and vine on one band and a navy ground with upright floral sprays on the outer band, separated by narrow ivory guard stripes patterned with 4 petal rosettes and gold tendrils. The 4 corners resolve cleanly, a good sign that the weaver worked to a properly drawn cartoon rather than improvising.

Color: Deep Navy With Salmon and Ivory Lights

The field is a true indigo navy, dark enough to read almost black in low light and to open into a clear blue under a lamp, with the faint tonal movement through the open ground that comes from hand-dyed wool. Against it the palette is warm: salmon and coral pink in the boteh and the inner border, brick rust in the palmettes, tobacco brown and old gold in the small rosettes, and a chalky ivory that lifts the guard stripes and the heart of the medallion. Two blues do the cooling work, a soft sky blue in the leaves and a deeper teal in the medallion outlines. Chocolate brown outlining keeps every motif separate and gives the rug its graphic punch from a standing height. The overall effect is cool and formal from across the room, warm and detailed once you are standing on it.

Kerman Weaving in Southeast Persia

Kerman sits in the high desert of southeast Persia and has been a weaving center since the Safavid period, known for curvilinear court drawing, pictorial garden borders and an unusually wide dye palette. Local wool is long-stapled and takes dye with a soft luster, which is why Kerman fields age into that slightly luminous, worn-velvet quality rather than going flat. Workshop practice here is asymmetric knotting on a cotton foundation with a firm weft beat, and this piece shows the results: a level pile, straight sides, and motif outlines that hold their shape without wobble even in the tight boteh. It is an honest room-size workshop rug from a town that has never had to borrow a design vocabulary from anywhere else.