9'9" x 13' Persian Mashad Rug | Antique Red Floral Medallion | Signed 1970s Khorasan

A signed room-size weaving from the workshops of northeast Persia, this rug carries an ivory inscription woven into the red end panel, which in the Khorasan tradition means a named workshop stood behind the piece rather than an anonymous village loom. The wool pile is clipped to 3/8" on a cotton foundation and has settled into the soft, slightly glossy patina that only decades of careful use produce. At 9'9" x 13" the proportions are generous without being awkward, which is why this format sits at the heart of the market for 10x13 Persian rugs, and the dealer background on Persian Mashad rugs is worth reading alongside the photographs. Every rug we sell ships with a certificate of authenticity.

Design and Motifs

The drawing is classic Khorasan: a navy lobed medallion anchored in the center of the field, filled with a salmon and ivory core panel that carries 4 dark 8 petal rosettes with orange centers and pink arabesques curling out to the lobes. Above and below it sit matching navy pendants, and the 4 corners are drawn as navy spandrels so the field reads as a framed garden. Across the open red ground the weaver scattered small flower vases, tall sprays of serrated leaves, pinwheel blossoms and large ivory outlined paisley forms that hook inward toward the medallion. The main border is a navy band of alternating rose palmettes and radiating rosettes joined by a slender vine, flanked by a camel toned guard stripe of blossoms and a red reciprocal minor stripe. Everything is curvilinear, drawn with a continuous flowing line rather than the stepped geometry of village work, which is exactly what separates a city Mashad from a tribal piece of the same region.

The Color Palette in Detail

The field is a true antique red, closer to crimson than brick, with a faint natural abrash that lightens toward the upper end and keeps the large expanse from looking flat. Against it the medallion and borders are a near black navy blue, so dark in the close-up shots that it reads as ink until the light finds the wool. Between those two poles the weaver worked a remarkably varied secondary palette: rose pink and raspberry in the palmettes, salmon and camel ivory in the medallion core and guard stripes, bottle green and sage in the leaves, soft powder blue in the small florals, and sharp pricks of burnt orange at the center of the rosettes. Black outlining around the paisleys and ivory highlights at the edges of each motif give the whole surface definition from standing height. Buyers who shop by palette will find this piece sits squarely among red and burgundy Persian rugs, though the pink and green accents give it far more warmth than a plain red ground.

Mashad and the Khorasan Weaving Tradition

Mashad is the great city of Khorasan in northeast Persia, and its looms have supplied room-size and palace-size floral weavings for well over a century. The regional wool is long stapled and takes dye deeply, which is why older Mashad rugs hold their reds instead of fading to orange, and the city workshops traditionally wove on a cotton foundation with a medium pile built for decades of daily traffic. A signature in the field, as here, marks a workshop piece: the master put his name to the drawing and the knotting, and the even selvedges, straight lines and consistent knot count across 13 feet of length back that up. The back photographs show a tight, regular weave with crisp motif definition, and the wear pattern is uniform rather than localized, which is one of the honest signs collectors use when dating an Oriental rug to a decade. A 1970s piece in this state of preservation is a semi-antique you can still put under furniture without hesitation.