9'9" x 13'5" Persian Kerman Rug | Deep Red Field, Navy Floral Border | Ivory and Pink Medallion

This is the Kerman formula done with restraint: a wide, quiet red field, a single ivory and pink medallion floating at the center, and a heavy navy border crowded with roses. Hand-knotted in southeast Persia in fine wool on a cotton foundation, it measures 9'9" x 13'5" with a 3/8" pile that still stands up full and even across the whole field. The scale is one of the most usable in the house, which is why 10x13 Persian rugs are the size we sell most of, and the condition here is excellent with no repairs or wear to note. A certificate of authenticity is issued with the rug.

Design and Motifs

The drawing is entirely curvilinear, with no straight line anywhere in the rug. At the center sits an elongated lobed medallion built from concentric rings of rosettes, sky blue cartouches and feathered ivory leafwork, closed top and bottom by tall finials and slender pendants that reach out into the open field. The medallion is outlined in navy, which is what makes it read so cleanly against the red. Four corner spandrels mirror that same vocabulary on a much larger scale: cloud-shaped navy reserves packed with rose bouquets, cypress-like leaf sprays and small 8 petal rosettes, with a trailing lattice of tiny blossoms dissolving into the field so the corners never look pasted on. The main border repeats the theme in a navy ground carrying alternating bouquets and framed floral cartouches, edged by narrow red guard stripes of vine and blossom. Between the medallion and the corners the field is deliberately left open, which is a confident choice by the designer and gives the eye somewhere to rest.

A Deep Madder Red Field with Navy and Rose

The field is a true deep red, cool rather than orange, with the faint tonal movement through the open areas that good hand-dyed wool always shows when light crosses the pile. Against it the border runs a dark inky navy, almost black where the wool is densest, and that contrast is the backbone of the whole design. The flowers are where the palette opens up: cream and oyster ivory in the leafwork, soft rose and salmon pink in the medallion core and the border bouquets, a clear pale sky blue in the small rosettes, olive and sage green in the vines, and touches of tan and warm gold in the stems. Pink is used more generously here than in many Kerman weavings, and it warms the medallion so it does not read as a cold ivory island in the middle of a red floor. The ivory fringe at both ends and the clean pile finish the presentation.

Kerman Weaving in Southeast Persia

Kerman sits on the high desert edge of southeast Persia and has been a workshop city, not a village weaving area, for centuries. Its reputation was built on two things: designers who worked in a fully drawn cartoon rather than from memory, and weavers capable of following a curved line across 13 feet without it wandering. You can see both in the symmetry of the corner spandrels and in the way the border bouquets keep their proportions all the way around. Kerman also relies on a floral, almost painterly vocabulary, the garden and bouquet drawing that separates it from the angular tribal and village weaves of the northwest. The wool is soft and takes dye well, the knotting is even, and the cotton foundation gives the rug the weight and stability it needs at this size. Laid flat, it sits true and holds its shape.