9' x 13' Persian Mashad Rug | Burgundy Field with Navy Lobed Medallion | 1980s Wool

This is a classic 1980s Persian Mashad rug in a 9' x 13' room-size format, hand-knotted in wool on a cotton foundation and still carrying a full, heavy pile after roughly 40 years. The drawing is the town formula at its most confident: a deep burgundy ground, a navy lobed medallion floating dead center, navy corner spandrels that square off the field, and a triple border system built around a wide navy palmette band framed by two ivory floral guards. At 9 feet by 13 feet it covers a full seating group or a 10 seat dining table, which puts it squarely among the large Persian rugs buyers shop when the room, not the look, sets the budget. Every rug we sell ships with a certificate of authenticity naming the origin, materials and size.

Design and Motifs

The medallion is drawn in three nested layers: a navy lobed cartouche outlined with a fine ivory and blue pearl line, a rust red inner frame, and at the very core an ivory 8 petal rosette with a cobalt blue star and a small brown and rose center. Above and below it hang ivory and green pendants shaped like cypress buds, each tipped with an orange carnation. The open burgundy field is filled with a measured all over scroll: curled saz leaves in forest and sea green, boteh paisleys in brown and pink, rounded shah abbas palmettes, and small 4 petal flowers linked by thin blue vines. The navy spandrels repeat the same vocabulary at a tighter scale, so the eye reads one continuous garden rather than two separate zones. The main border runs a chain of large pink and brown palmettes alternating with upright floral cartouches on navy, and the ivory guards carry a simple rosette and leaf meander that keeps the outer edge light. Symmetry is near perfect on the long axis, with the small drawing variations you expect from a loom rather than a machine.

The Color Palette in Detail

The field is a saturated burgundy that leans raspberry where the light hits the pile straight on and drops toward a deep wine tone in the shadowed rows, a natural abrash shift that gives the ground movement across 13 feet. Against it, the navy of the medallion and spandrels reads almost blue black, and that contrast is what makes the center hold from across a room. The secondary palette is unusually rich for a town rug: forest green and a brighter sea green in the leaves, cobalt and mid blue in the small flowers, rose pink and salmon in the palmettes, warm brown and olive in the stems, and bright orange used sparingly as a highlight in the border flowers. Ivory does the structural work, outlining the medallion, the pendants and both guard borders, and it has aged to a soft cream rather than a hard white. If you are already looking at burgundy Persian rugs, this one sits at the jewel toned end of that family rather than the brick or rust end, and it takes warm woods, brass and cream walls particularly well.

Mashad and the Weaving of Khorasan

Mashad is the great weaving city of Khorasan in northeastern Persia, and its looms have always worked large. Khorasan wool is long stapled and high in lanolin, which is why a Mashad pile keeps its sheen and springs back under furniture instead of flattening, and why weavers there can leave the pile a touch taller than a Tabriz or Isfahan workshop would. This piece is a solid town weave rather than a master signed atelier commission: no cartouche, a firm hand-knotted back with even knot rows visible along the folded corner, cotton warps and wefts, and clean straight selvedges with original ivory fringe at both ends. That combination is exactly what makes 1980s Mashad rugs the practical choice at this size, since the same design woven finer in a silk or kork workshop would cost several times as much and wear far less happily in a busy room. Laid flat, the burgundy ground and navy medallion do what this town has been doing for a century: fill a big floor without shouting.