12'7" x 19'5" Antique Persian Kashan Rug | Navy Medallion on Burgundy | Circa 1930s Palace Size

A rug of this length does not turn up often. Woven in central Persia around 1930, this antique Persian Kashan rug measures 12'7" x 19'5" and covers a full banquet room or a long open plan living space end to end. The wool is the soft, faintly lustrous kind that older Kashan weavers were known for, and after roughly 90 years the pile still has that slight sheen you can see when the light crosses it in the photographs. Ends and sides are intact, the drawing is crisp from one end to the other, and the piece lies flat and ready to use. It ships with a certificate of authenticity, and like all of our oversize Persian rugs, it travels free anywhere in the 50 states despite the weight.

Design and Motifs

The layout is the classical Kashan formula, drawn at a scale most weavers never attempt. A lobed central medallion sits on a midnight blue ground, built in concentric rings of gold and burgundy around a small rosette, with anchor palmettes and long slender pendants reaching toward each end of the field. Around it, the burgundy field is filled with a continuous curving vine that carries palmettes, rosettes, serrated leaves and small blossoms, every element outlined so the pattern reads clearly even across 19'5" of floor. Four corner spandrels in ivory and gold frame the medallion and echo its vinework. The border system runs five bands deep: a wide navy main border of alternating floral bouquets and leaf sprays, flanked by apricot guard stripes and narrower gold and indigo minor bands, then finished with a plain burgundy outer edge. Photograph 12 shows the medallion center at full detail, and photograph 11 shows how densely the field vine is packed.

A Burgundy, Navy and Apricot Palette

The dominant color is a deep burgundy that leans toward wine in shadow and toward a warm cherry red where the light hits the pile directly, which is why the field looks a shade brighter in photograph 5 than in the flat overhead view. Against it, the medallion, spandrel grounds and main border sit in a very dark navy that is nearly black at the edges of the drawing and opens into clear indigo in the flower heads. The third voice is the apricot and salmon of the guard stripes, a soft coral tone that has mellowed with age and gives the whole rug its warmth; next to it the ivory and old gold of the minor borders and the corner spandrels supply the light. Scattered through the field are small notes of rose pink, sky blue, camel and pale straw, most of them no larger than a single blossom, and those little accents are what keep such a large expanse of red and blue from reading as heavy.

Kashan Weaving and the Quality of This Piece

Kashan lies in central Persia, north of Isfahan, and its looms trace back to the Safavid court workshops that produced some of the most famous carpets ever woven. The town's reputation rests on two things: locally sourced wool with an unusual softness and sheen, and a drawing tradition that keeps curved lines accurate even in fine detail. When you watch Shark Tank there is a Persian Kashan on the floor, which tells you how firmly this design has settled into the Western idea of what a Persian rug looks like. A 12'7" x 19'5" piece of this type was a commission: the loom had to be built for it, and one weaving team stayed with it for years to keep the drawing consistent across the full length. The cotton foundation is tight, the knotting is even, and the pile has worn down slowly and evenly rather than in patches, which is the honest sign of a well made rug that was looked after. If you want to understand how pieces like this are placed in time, our guide on how to date an Oriental rug walks through the same clues we used here.