9'9" x 13'2" Persian Kashan Rug | Wool | Ivory and Blue

A 9'9" x 13'2" Kashan knotted in Persia in wool, with a 3/8" pile and a rectangular format. Seen whole, it reads as a pale rug: an ivory field carrying a dense floral tracery in blue, soft green and lilac, with a star medallion at the centre and a wide, closely drawn border system at the edges. One end border carries a woven cartouche with a signature in Persian script.

Design

The medallion is an eight-point star built from lilac and pale blue scrolling leafwork, with a small pale green cartouche at its core holding a single rosette on a red dot, and it throws pendant finials north and south along the long axis. Around it the field is filled edge to edge with thin vine scrolls, palmettes, serrated leaves and small four-petal blossoms, arranged symmetrically but rarely repeating twice in the same colour. Quarter spandrels in a slightly warmer ivory close off the four corners. The main border runs a meandering vine with alternating palmettes and rosettes, flanked by several narrow guard stripes of reciprocal trefoil and running flowerheads, and in the middle of the one end sits the signature cartouche, an ivory panel outlined in brick red with a red device above the script.

Colour

The ground is an unbleached ivory, warm rather than white, and everything drawn on it is low in contrast. Outlines are a deep indigo that goes almost black in the guard stripes, filled with a lighter cornflower and a chalky sky blue. Green appears twice over: a muted sage in the border leaves and a pale celadon in the medallion centre. Threaded through the field are small quantities of madder red, rust and mustard gold, used at the scale of a single flowerhead, and a quantity of lilac and lavender that the colour list does not name but which carries much of the medallion and the outer border ground.

Making

Hand-knotted in Persia in the Kashan manner, with a wool pile clipped to 3/8" over a cotton foundation. The back, shown against a ruler, is even and regular, the knots small enough to hold the thin vine stems and the script of the signature without breaking them up. Condition is given as excellent, and the pile in the photographs stands full across the field and into the corners.