9'9" x 14' Persian Kashan Rug | Red Field, Sapphire Medallion | Excellent Condition

At 9'9" x 14" this is a true room-size Kashan, and it carries the design the town is known for without a single shortcut: a red field packed with scrolling vines and flower heads, a sapphire and navy lobed medallion set dead center with ivory and gold drawing inside it, and matching spandrels closing the field at all 4 corners. The pile is 3/8" wool on a cotton foundation, hand-knotted in the city workshop manner, and the piece has come through in excellent order with even pile, straight sides and the original ivory fringes at both ends. It is one of the most useful proportions we stock, which is why 10x14 Persian rugs move so quickly: long enough to hold a dining table with the chairs pulled out, wide enough to run a large living room nearly wall to wall. It ships with our certificate of authenticity recording origin, materials and measurements.

Design and Motifs

The drawing is the classic Kashan arrangement, worked out so the field reads as one continuous garden rather than a set of repeats. The medallion is a lobed navy cartouche with an 8 petal rosette at its heart, ringed by small palmettes and curling leaves, and a pendant finial drops from each end toward the spandrels. Around it the red ground carries an all-over lattice of thin vines, cypress-like leaf sprays, rosettes, carnations and open palmettes, every element outlined so the curve of the vine stays legible even at arm's length. The ivory spandrels at the 4 corners are filled with denser vine work on a pale ground that lifts the corners away from the red. The border system runs 5 bands deep: a red outer guard, a reciprocal ivory and sapphire zigzag, then the wide navy main border of alternating palmettes and rosettes linked by vine, followed by an ivory floral guard and a narrow inner stripe that frames the field cleanly. The corner resolution in image 6 is honest workshop drawing, with the border pattern turning the corner properly instead of being cut off.

Color: Madder Red, Navy and Ivory

The field is a deep madder red with a faint warm cast, the shade that makes red Persian rugs sit so comfortably with walnut and mahogany furniture, and it carries a soft natural variation across the width that reads as depth rather than patchiness. Against it the main border and medallion ground are a near-black navy, while the medallion interior, the border vines and the spandrel grounds bring in a lighter sapphire blue that keeps the whole piece from going heavy. Ivory does the structural work: the spandrels, the reciprocal guard stripe seen in the close-up, and the outlines of the larger flower heads. Inside the flowers the palette opens up into rose pink, salmon, soft gold and olive green, with occasional pale sky blue and a warm brown in the palmette centers. The ivory fringe and the clean red selvage finish the ends. In daylight the wool takes a light sheen that shifts the red lighter or deeper depending on which direction you walk around the rug.

Kashan: Central Persia and the Weave

Kashan sits in central Persia, north of Isfahan, and its weaving goes back to the Safavid court workshops. The town's reputation rests on soft lustrous local wool and on one formula it has never needed to abandon: red field, navy lobed medallion, ivory spandrels. That formula is why Kashan is the most recognized traditional rug in America, and it is the Shark Tank rug, because when you watch Shark Tank there is a Persian Kashan on the floor. This piece is city work rather than village work, knotted tight on a cotton foundation with a short clipped 3/8" pile so the fine vine drawing holds its line, and the wool has enough body to take heavy traffic under a dining table for decades. Our guide to Persian Kashan rugs walks through how the type is drawn, dyed and graded if you want to compare this one against others in the group.