9'9" x 13'11" Chinese Oriental Rug | Kashan Allover Floral Design | Wool and Silk Pile, New

This is a new, never used hand-knotted piece measuring 9'9" x 13'11", woven in China with a wool and silk pile on a cotton foundation and drawn after the classic Kashan allover floral formula. The silk is used where it earns its keep, in the flower heads and the thin connecting vines, so the blossoms lift off the maroon ground with a wet shine while the wool ground stays matte and deep. At just under 10 x 14 it is a full room size, and buyers shopping the 10 x 14 Oriental rugs class will find this one unusually crisp in its drawing for the money. Every rug we ship carries a certificate of authenticity confirming that it is hand-knotted, along with its size, materials and origin.

Design and Motifs

The field is an allover floral, not a medallion layout. Large radiating palmettes and full face rosettes sit on a lattice of hairline vines, with a vertical spine of shaped cartouche palmettes running up the center of the rug and smaller lotus blossoms, buds and serrated leaves filling the ground between them. The drawing is mirrored left to right and top to bottom, which gives the pattern its formality, and the weaver kept the vine scroll thin and continuous so the field reads as one connected garden rather than a grid of separate flowers. The ivory main border carries alternating fan shaped palmettes and cinquefoil blossoms on a lazy meandering vine, flanked by 2 beige guard stripes of small 5 petal rosettes with dark navy centers. Corners resolve cleanly, with the border pattern turning properly at all 4 corners instead of being cut off, a detail that separates careful workshop weaving from production work.

A Deep Maroon Field Against Ivory and Soft Pastels

The ground is a saturated maroon with a wine undertone, dark enough to anchor a large room and warm enough to sit comfortably with wood tones and brass. Against it the flowers are worked in ivory, cream, soft peach and a dusty salmon pink, with sage and olive green in the leaf work and small touches of slate blue and pale lilac inside the rosette centers. Fine black outlining defines the palmettes and keeps the pastels from bleeding into the red. The main border is a clean ivory, cooler and lighter than the flower heads on the field, so the border frames the maroon rather than competing with it, while the beige guard bands act as a bridge tone between the 2. The silk highlights shift with the light: viewed from one end of the room the blossoms read bright ivory, from the other they warm toward gold. Colors throughout look fresh and even, with no abrash and no fading.

Chinese Workshop Weaving in the Kashan Tradition

This rug was made in China, where fine workshops have long woven classic Persian city patterns to their own high standard, and it is an Oriental rug in the proper sense of the term rather than a copy of any single piece. The Kashan allover floral is the design being interpreted here, and interpreting it well demands a tight weave, because curved vine work and multi tone palmettes fall apart at a coarse knot count. The close-up photographs show the resolution the weaver achieved: single knot outlines, clean petal edges and vine lines only a knot or 2 wide. The handle is firm with a short even clip, the selvedges are tight and the fringe is the warp ends of the cotton foundation, hand finished. At 9'9" x 13'11" the rug is heavy, dense and built to take traffic, and it ships free anywhere in the 50 states.