9' x 12'3" Persian Kerman Rug | Wool | Red and Ivory

A 9' x 12'3" carpet knotted by hand in Persia, with a wool pile on a rectangular format. The first thing you see is the red: a broad, largely open field carrying a single cream medallion, with the drawing pushed out to the corners and the borders. It reads as a formal carpet that has been kept deliberately quiet in the middle.

Design

The Kerman drawing here is built around one lobed medallion set on the long axis, its cream ground filled with a navy cartouche of paired palmettes and small rosettes, finished with a ragged, feathery outline that breaks into the red rather than sitting hard against it. Above and below it hang small cusped pendants. The field is otherwise empty apart from four loose flower sprays, one in each quarter, and the deep serrated cream frame that swings in from the corner spandrels. Those spandrels are filled with pale blue and cream scrollwork on a fine scale. The main border runs on near black with a procession of large rosettes and split leaves, flanked by a celadon guard stripe of single blossoms and, on the inner edge, the narrow cream band of running scrolls visible in the close photographs.

Colour

The ground is a cool madder red, closer to cherry than to brick, and it shifts noticeably across the width where the light crosses the pile. Against it the medallion and the frame are a soft ivory and beige that has gone slightly honey at the edges, outlined in old gold. The borders bring in an inky navy as their ground with sky blue scrolls laid over it, and the flowers are picked out in rose pink, a warm russet brown and touches of pale green in the leaves and guard stripes. The overall effect is a hot field held in check by cool blues and pale cream.

Making

Hand-knotted in wool, with a cotton-coloured fringe and a clipped, even pile that shows the outlines cleanly in the detail shots. The table dates it to the 1980s through the 2000s, which places it among the semi-antique weavings rather than the antique ones, and the condition is given as excellent. For anyone working through the wider stock, it sits with the rest of the hand-knotted rugs in the large room size.