9' x 12'5" Persian Kerman Rug | Red Floral Field with Blue Medallion | 1980s, Excellent Condition

A room-size Kerman from the 1980s, hand-knotted in wool on a cotton foundation and still carrying full, even pile from edge to edge. At 9' x 12'5" it covers the classic 9x12 Persian rug footprint, which is the size most buyers need when a sofa, two chairs and a coffee table all have to sit on the rug rather than around it. The drawing is the softer, more painterly side of Persian weaving: a deep red ground left largely open, scattered with small floral sprays, and a lobed blue medallion holding the center. Every rug we sell ships with a certificate of authenticity confirming origin, materials and hand-knotted construction.

Design and Motifs

The center medallion is a horizontal lobed cartouche in blue, filled with an ivory inner rosette and ringed by roses, carnations and small forget-me-not style blossoms. It sends pendants north and south, each one a smaller bouquet in the same palette, so the long axis of the rug reads as a continuous floral spine. Around it the field carries dozens of detached sprays and leafy bouquets, spaced loosely so the red ground stays visible and the eye keeps moving. The spandrels break into a scalloped blue frame that steps around the field in a crown-like line, filled with roses, palmettes and curling vine. The main border repeats that logic at a larger scale: blue ground, arched floral cartouches with ivory and pink blossoms, flanked by salmon scrollwork, then narrow green and ivory guard stripes with a fine dentil edge. It is curvilinear drawing throughout, with no straight geometric lines anywhere in the composition.

The Color Story: Deep Red, Medium Blue, Green and Ivory

The field is a true saturated red with a cool, slightly wine-leaning cast rather than a hot orange-red, and because the wool takes light well the surface shifts a shade darker or lighter depending on where you stand, as the close-up photographs show. Against it the blue work runs medium and clear, closer to a denim or sapphire tone than to navy, with deeper indigo accents picked out around the medallion core. Ivory and cream carry the outlines and the smaller petals, which is what keeps the florals legible across so much red. Supporting those four main colors are soft greens in the leaves and guard stripe, salmon and peach in the border scrollwork, and rose pink in the larger blossoms, giving the piece its characteristic gentle, pastel-tinted warmth. If this palette is what you are after, our full selection of red and burgundy Persian rugs is worth a look alongside it.

Kerman: Weaving City of Southeast Persia

Kerman sits in the southeast of Persia and has woven for the export and court markets for centuries, building its reputation on floral drawing rather than on tribal geometry. The city's weavers work from detailed cartoons, which is how a design like this one keeps its bouquets symmetrical across more than 12 feet of length, and the regional wool takes dye cleanly enough to support the pale greens, peaches and ivories that other towns rarely attempt. Pictorial and garden-style borders are the Kerman signature, and the arched floral cartouches running around this piece come straight out of that tradition. The weave here is firm and regular, the back shows clear, even knot rows, and the selvages and ivory fringe are intact, which is what you want to see in a 40-year-old city rug that has been kept rather than walked to death.