9'9" x 13'10" Persian Najafabad Rug | Esfahan All-Over Floral Medallion | Mint Condition

This is a town-woven Najafabad rug from the Esfahan weaving district of central Persia, drawn in the full classical Esfahan manner: a star medallion floating in the middle of a dense flowering field, cusped ivory and gold spandrels, and a wide midnight navy border carrying palmettes on a continuous vine. At 9'9" x 13'10" it covers a true room, the kind of footprint most buyers searching 10x14 Persian rugs are after, and it does it with a hand-knotted wool pile that is still full, even and tightly packed from end to end. The wool has the soft sheen you can see in the rolled-edge photograph, the cotton foundation lies flat without a ripple, and the ivory fringe and selvedges are intact. Woven in the 2000's and in perfect condition, it ships with a certificate of authenticity confirming it as a genuine hand-knotted Persian rug.

Design and Motifs

The center holds a 16 point star medallion built in layers: a small rosette core, a ring of pale blue lancet petals, a band of pistachio and camel palmettes, and a navy outline that pulls the whole figure forward off the red ground. Narrow pendants run north and south from the medallion, and two navy boteh cartouches sit on the long axis to the left and right, so the field reads symmetrically in both directions. Around all of that the field is filled edge to edge with an all-over floral lattice, thin vine stems linking open rosettes, 5 petal blossoms, curled leaves and small lotus heads, with no empty ground anywhere. The corners are resolved by scalloped ivory gold spandrels, each carrying its own blue and brown flower heads, and these are separated from the border by a slim red outline. The main navy border repeats a large palmette flanked by split leaves, and it is held between ivory guard stripes drawn with the same vine, then a final narrow reciprocal outer band.

Color Palette

The field is a deep tomato red, clear and saturated rather than brick, and it is the one color doing the heavy work across all 13'10" of length. Against it the drawing is cool: midnight navy for the border, the medallion outline and the boteh cartouches, with 3 distinct lighter blues inside the flowers, a soft sky blue, a mid cornflower, and a chalky grey blue used for highlights. Ivory appears twice, as the guard stripes and as the fine outlining that separates every petal from the red, which is what keeps such a crowded field legible. Between those two poles sit the warm tones that make the rug feel older than its age: pistachio green leaves, a yellow toned gold through the spandrels and the medallion ring, soft camel, cinnamon brown flower centers and small touches of pale peach. In the close-up photographs the pile catches light differently along the nap, so the red can look brighter in one direction and deeper in the other, which is normal for fine wool at this density.

Najafabad and the Esfahan Tradition

Najafabad is a weaving town a short distance west of Esfahan, and its weavers work from the same cartoons and the same curvilinear tradition that made Isfahan rugs famous from the Safavid workshops onward. The difference is practical: Najafabad specializes in large room and oversize pieces in all wool on a cotton foundation, built for floors rather than for the wall, so you get the Esfahan drawing, the vine that curves without breaking and the balanced medallion, in a heavier and more durable rug that handles a dining table or a busy living room. The weave here is tight and regular, the back is crisp and the knotting even through both ends, with straight sides and square corners, all signs of a workshop loom rather than village work. Pieces like this are the sensible way into the Esfahan look at a room size, since a comparable city Esfahan in wool and silk at 9'9" x 13'10" would sit in a completely different bracket.