9'9" x 13'8" Persian Kashan Rug | Red Field, Black Border | Excellent Wool Pile

This is a full room-size Persian floor piece, 9'9" x 13'8" of hand-knotted wool on a cotton foundation, drawn in the classic formula that made Persian Kashan rugs the standard for formal rooms. The back label sewn to the corner records it as weave number 7090, type Ardekan, a hand-knotted woolen rug, and the ruler laid across the back in that photograph shows the tight, even knotting that runs edge to edge. The pile is a healthy 3/8" with no low spots, the selvedges are intact and the ivory fringe is clean, which is why the condition reads Excellent. It falls squarely in the 10x14 Persian rugs range, the size most buyers need when a sofa group or a 10 seat dining table has to sit fully on the rug. Every rug we sell ships with a certificate of authenticity.

Design and Motifs

The layout is medallion and corner over a densely filled field, the drawing Kashan weavers have kept almost unchanged for generations. At center sits a pointed lobed medallion outlined in cream, with a small ivory cartouche at its heart holding a grey blue rosette, and a pendant finial reaching out at each end. The 4 corner spandrels answer it in the same black ground, so the eye reads a complete frame even when furniture covers part of the field. Between them the ground is packed with small palmettes, 8 petal rosettes, serrated leaves and thin curling vines, every element balanced left to right without ever repeating mechanically. The border system runs 7 bands deep: a broad black main border of alternating rose blossoms and shield palmettes on a scrolling vine, flanked by grey blue guard stripes of tiny buds, then narrow cream and red minor stripes that step the pattern down to the edge. The fine detail in the corner photograph shows how cleanly the border turns, which is the test of a well drawn cartoon.

A Deep Red Field Framed in Black

The field is a deep red with a cool raspberry cast rather than a warm brick tone, and because the wool is lustrous it shifts noticeably with the light, reading darker from one end of the room and brighter from the other. Against it the main border is a near black charcoal that gives the rug a hard, clean outline on a pale floor. The filler work carries the rest of the palette in small doses: ivory and cream for the outlining vines and the medallion core, dusty rose and old pink in the blossoms, a soft grey blue in the guard stripes and in many of the rosette centers, olive and sage in the leaves, with occasional touches of gold, rust and apricot that keep the field from flattening out. The ivory spandrels at the 4 corners are the lightest areas on the rug and they do a lot of work, lifting the composition where the black border would otherwise close it in. If you are shopping the red and burgundy range, this one sits on the cooler, more formal side of it.

Kashan Weaving and the Ardekan Hand

Kashan sits in central Persia north of Isfahan, and its workshops trace their drawing straight back to the Safavid court tradition: red field, lobed medallion, ivory spandrels, borders full of palmette and vine. It is the design most people picture when they picture a Persian rug, and when you watch Shark Tank there is a Persian Kashan on the floor. The label on this piece names Ardekan, one of the central Persian weaving towns that works the Kashan cartoon to the same standard, using the same cotton warp and weft and the same soft local wool. The result is a rug with real weight and a dense, close-cropped pile that holds the fine floral detail you can see in the medallion close-up. At 9'9" x 13'8" it was woven on a large loom by a team working together, which is why the pattern stays true across nearly 14 feet of length with no drift in the border turns or the medallion axis.