9'9" x 13'4" Persian Yazd Rug | Ivory Star Medallion Field | Bakhtiari Floral Design

This 9'9" x 13'4" Persian Yazd is a room size piece built around a single idea: one 12 point star medallion, drawn dead center, floating on an ivory ground that has been filled edge to edge with flowering vines. The pile is wool on a cotton foundation, and the back photograph shows a tight, regular knot with the drawing reading almost as clearly from behind as from the face. Condition is excellent, with even pile height across the field, clean selvages and full original borders. At 117 inches by 160 inches it seats a full sofa and two chairs with all legs on, which is exactly what buyers shopping 10x13 Persian rugs are usually trying to solve. Every rug we sell ships with a certificate of authenticity stating origin, materials and hand-knotted construction.

Design and Motifs

The center is a 12 point star medallion whose rays are worked in cornflower blue and outlined with a fine navy line and a row of white dots. Inside it sits a deep red rosette panel drawn with white arabesque vine and small blue and green blossoms, and each blue ray carries its own lotus head, so the medallion reads as a sunburst of separate small paintings rather than one flat shape. Above and below, a pendant 8 petal star repeats the same palette on a smaller scale. At the 4 corners of the field, clusters of hexagonal cartouches, blue framed and dot edged, hold red panels with ivory strapwork, a device borrowed from Bakhtiari panel drawing and adapted here to a medallion layout. The open ivory ground between these elements is not left empty: it carries thin red and green vine stems, rosettes, tulip and carnation heads, feathery leaves and a scattering of small birds, visible clearly in the corner detail. The border system runs 5 bands deep, with a broad madder red main border of ivory palmette and scrolling vine, flanked by ivory guard stripes and a narrow blue outer stripe that closes the composition.

A Palette of Ivory, Cornflower Blue and Madder Red

The field is a warm ivory, closer to unbleached cream than to white, and it is that ground that makes the rug feel light in a large room despite the density of the drawing. Against it the weaver set two strong colors: a mid cornflower blue for the medallion rays, the corner cartouche frames and the small pendant stars, and a deep madder red for the medallion core, the main border and the palmettes. Navy blue does the structural work, outlining every blue shape and every cartouche so the drawing holds its edges at a distance. Supporting tones appear only in the small motifs, sage and olive green in the leaves, a pale sky blue in the smaller rosettes, soft rose and tan in the flower heads, and clean ivory highlights inside the red. The back of the rug shows warm pink ivory wefts between the knot rows, which is part of why the face reads mellow rather than stark. Nothing here is harsh, and the red and blue balance one another closely enough that the rug will work with both cool and warm furnishings.

Yazd: Workshop Weaving in Central Persia

Yazd is a desert city in central Persia, southeast of Isfahan, with a textile history that runs back centuries through silk and brocade weaving before rug production became a major trade there. Yazd looms are urban workshop looms: the weaver works from a drawn cartoon on a cotton warp, which is what allows the curved rays, the dotted outlines and the mirrored corner cartouches on this piece to hold their symmetry across more than 13 feet. The drawing tradition sits between the precision of Isfahan and the floral fluency of Kerman, and Yazd workshops have long woven patterns drawn from the neighboring Chahar Mahal and Bakhtiari districts, which is where the panel and cartouche motifs in this field come from. The wool is dense and firmly packed, the pile clipped low enough to keep the fine detail legible, and the handle is that of a solid, heavy, city woven rug rather than a village piece. That combination, a workshop weave and a village-rooted pattern, is what makes a good Yazd worth owning.