11'6" x 17'9" Persian Moshkabad Rug | Vintage Oversize, Navy Herati Field 

This is a vintage Persian Moshkabad in a genuine palace format, 11'6" x 17'9", woven roughly 50 years ago and kept in flawless, never-used condition ever since. Despite its age the pile is deep and completely intact, and the wool has the soft, almost waxy handle that only good village fleece develops with time. A navy field carries a dense allover pattern anchored by a small terracotta medallion, and the whole rug is finished with a wide brick red border. Very few oversize rugs of this vintage survive without a trace of wear; this one ships with a certificate of authenticity.

Design and Motifs

The field is filled edge to edge with the herati pattern, the classic Persian repeat of a rosette framed by 4 curved leaves, worked here in a fine diamond lattice across more than 17 feet of length. At the center sits a modest lobed medallion with a sage-green core, small enough that the eye keeps returning to the overall rhythm of the field rather than stopping at any single point. The main border runs a procession of turtle palmettes and scrolling vines, bracketed by ivory guard stripes carrying a running flower-and-leaf meander. It is a village reading of a formal court layout: precise enough to feel deliberate, loose enough to feel handmade.

A Deep Navy Ground Lit With Color

The field is a deep indigo navy, dark enough to ground a large room, and against it the pattern sparks with brick red, salmon pink, teal green, olive, and touches of clear gold and ivory. The central medallion turns warmer, a terracotta frame around a pale celadon heart. The main border reverses the balance onto a rich brick red ground where cream palmettes and soft green leaves stand out, and the ivory guard borders keep the whole composition from reading too heavy. Seen by day the navy opens up into blue; by lamplight it deepens toward black, and the reds and golds come forward. It is a versatile, deeply saturated palette that suits a formal dining room or a large living space equally well.

Moshkabad, a Village Weave From Central Persia

Moshkabad is a weaving village in central Persia, in the broad region north of Isfahan associated with the Arak and Sultanabad workshops. Its rugs occupy an appealing middle ground: they borrow the grand allover layouts of the city ateliers but keep the honest, hard-wearing build of a village loom. The wool is local, prized for its strength and its soft hand, and knotted on a cotton foundation at a village-grade count near 200 knots per square inch, which is exactly what gives a rug like this its longevity. At this scale it belongs to the family of persian oversize rugs built to fill a great room, and buyers searching specifically for 12x18 persian rugs will find few with this combination of age, condition, and soft wool.