11'4" x 16' Persian Kerman Rug | Lavar Tree of Life Garden Design | 1970s, Perfect Condition

Very few rugs of this scale carry drawing this delicate, and that is the first thing you notice standing over this 11'4" x 16' Persian Kerman. It was woven in the 1970s in the Lavar tradition, the most finely drawn branch of Kerman work, and the entire 136 by 192 inch field is filled with flowering trees rising out of a deep navy ground. The wool is dense and springy underfoot, the pile is full and even edge to edge, the ivory cotton fringe is intact, and the navy selvages are sound. Among oversize Persian rugs this one is unusually cheerful rather than formal, because the palette is a garden rather than a court scheme. A certificate of authenticity is included with purchase, documenting origin, age, materials and hand-knotted construction.

Design and Motifs

The field is a mirrored garden: slender brown branches climb from a grassy base at each end, splitting into thousands of separately drawn blossoms, roses, carnations, bluebells, lilies, plum sprays and 8 petal rosettes, with feathery leaf fronds and small boteh forms tucked between the stems. This is an all-over floral design with no central medallion, so the eye never settles in one place; instead, 4 corners are anchored by large circular rosette wreaths ringed in crimson and gold, a Lavar Kerman signature. The main border runs a chain of round floral cartouches and upright cypress-like boteh on a camel and navy ground, flanked by sky blue guard stripes of alternating flower heads and a narrow saw-tooth band. Close photography shows how tightly the curved line is held, with outlines only 1 or 2 knots wide keeping each petal crisp.

A Garden of Color on a Deep Navy Ground

The ground is a dark indigo navy, almost black where the pile bends away from the light, and that depth is what lets the flower colors glow. Across it sit rose pink and hot magenta blossoms, crimson and burgundy petals, warm gold and old-ivory flower heads, chartreuse and forest green leaves, powder blue and cornflower buds, with occasional lavender and soft peach highlights. The trunks and vines are a caramel camel brown that reappears as the outer border ground and again in the innermost frame, tying the field to the edges. The wide guard borders are a pale sky blue that lifts the whole rug and reads much lighter in a room than the overhead photos suggest. Nothing has faded: the reverse, visible in the back photograph, shows the same saturated rose, gold and blue as the surface.

Kerman Weaving and the Lavar Name

Kerman sits in southeast Persia and has produced floral and pictorial weaving at a high level for centuries, with its own designers, dyers and master weavers working from painted cartoons rather than memory. The Lavar designation, taken from the town of Ravar north of Kerman city, has long been used in the trade for the finest and most detailed Kerman drawing, which is exactly what this piece shows: curved stems carried smoothly through a 16 foot length, pictorial garden borders, and a color count well past 20 shades. Weaving a garden field of this size demands that every repeat line up over more than 3 meters of width, and the mirrored halves here meet cleanly along the center. The wool is the soft, lustrous local fleece Kerman is known for, spun fine and knotted onto a cotton foundation, which is why a rug of this size still lies flat and drapes rather than standing stiff.