9' x 12'2" Oriental Wool Rug | Kashan Design All Over Floral | Dense 18/18 Weave, New

This is a workshop piece in the true sense: a hand-knotted wool Oriental rug woven in Pakistan at 18/18 quality, meaning 18 knots in each direction across every square inch, or roughly 324 knots per square inch. At 9' x 12'2" it sits right in the most useful room size there is, and buyers shopping 9x12 hand-knotted rugs will notice immediately how tight and even the knotting is compared with typical commercial goods. The pile is a clean, lustrous wool over a cotton foundation, the fringe is hand-tied at both ends, and the rug has never been used or walked on. It ships with our certificate of authenticity confirming the hand-knotted construction, materials and measurements.

Design and Motifs

The field is drawn in the classical Kashan manner but with no central medallion, which gives you a true all over floral design that reads the same from every seat in the room and lets you place furniture anywhere without hiding the drawing. Slender vines run in mirrored repeats, carrying ribbed palmettes, 8 petal rosettes, serrated split leaves and small budded blossoms. Look closely at the close-up photo and you can see how each leaf is outlined in a darker tone so the shapes stay crisp against the red ground, a detail only a high knot count allows. The wide main border alternates curling boteh paisleys with open palmette blossoms on an ivory ground, and 2 narrow guard stripes of tiny vine and rosette work fence it in on both sides. The corners are resolved cleanly, with the border pattern turning properly rather than being cut off, which is the first thing an experienced buyer checks.

A Deep Red Field Framed in Ivory

The ground is a deep cherry red with a slight warmth to it, the kind of red that looks almost burgundy in low lamplight and brightens considerably in daylight, as the 2 full views show. Against it the vine work is worked in ivory and cream, with pale beige and soft peach used for the flower heads and sage green for the leaves and stems. Black is used sparingly and purposefully, as outlining around the palmettes and leaf tips, giving the pattern definition instead of blur. The main border flips the balance completely: an ivory to light beige ground carrying red paisleys, sage foliage and touches of rose and peach, with a grey green guard band separating it from the field. That ivory frame is what keeps a 9 by 12 red rug from feeling heavy in a room, and it makes the piece easy to live with alongside cream walls, dark wood and warm oak floors like the one in the photographs.

Woven in Pakistan at 18/18 Quality

Pakistan has spent decades building weaving houses that work to old workshop standards, and the best of them produce goods like this one: a fine double knot on a cotton warp, dense enough that the back reads almost like graph paper. Turn the corner over, as in the last photograph, and you can count the knot rows and see the design coming through the reverse with full clarity, which is the honest test of a hand-knotted rug. At approximately 324 knots per square inch this weave is well above ordinary commercial production and is what makes the fine vine work and the outlined leaves possible at all. The pile has been sheared to a medium height, low enough to hold the detail and heavy enough to take real traffic under a dining table or in a family room for generations. Condition is perfect and the rug has never been on a floor.