11'9" x 16'7" Persian Mashad Rug | All-Over Floral Design | Signed 1950s Oversize

This is a genuine workshop piece from the 1950s, one of the better Persian Mashad rugs we have carried at this scale, and it is signed: a small woven cartouche sits in the lower border, which in Mashad means a named master stood behind the loom rather than an anonymous village weave. At 11'9" x 16'7" it belongs with the true oversize Persian rugs, hand-knotted in wool on a cotton foundation, with the pile still standing full and even across the whole field after seven decades. It ships with a certificate of authenticity documenting origin, age, materials and construction.

Design and Motifs

There is no central medallion here. The field is a continuous all-over drawing built on mirrored vine scrolls that run the full 16'7" length, carrying large serrated palmettes, 8 petal rosettes, split leaves and curled boteh paisleys that repeat without ever sitting on top of one another. Look closely at the field detail and you can see the drawing is genuinely curvilinear, with thin blue tendrils linking each flower head, a sign the weavers were working from a proper cartoon rather than memory. The main border is the showpiece: oversized paisley cartouches alternating with upright floral sprays on a deep navy ground, framed by 2 rust red minor borders of small blue and ivory rosettes and a fine ivory guard stripe. The corners resolve cleanly, the border turns are properly drawn, and the plain burgundy outer edge gives the whole composition a finished frame.

Burgundy Field with Navy and Jewel-Tone Accents

The ground is a saturated burgundy that leans toward raspberry and wine depending on how the light hits the pile, deepest where the nap lies away from you and brighter, almost cherry, where it lies toward you. Against it the palette is unusually rich for a Mashad: indigo and mid blue in the palmette hearts, softer sky blue in the small flowers, rust orange and coral at the flower centers, rose pink in the petals, cream and ivory outlines that keep every motif legible, plus quiet camel brown and a little sage green in the leaves. The main border reverses the scheme, putting pink, ivory and turquoise paisleys against near-black navy, while the minor borders return to a warm rust red. The ivory fringe at both ends is clean and full. It is a warm, high-contrast rug that reads jewel-toned rather than dark.

Mashad Weaving in Khorasan

Mashad sits in Khorasan, in the far northeast of Persia, and its city workshops built their reputation on large-format floral carpets woven in the long-staple Khorasan wool that takes red dye better than almost any fleece in the country. That wool is why this rug still has depth and shine at 70 years old, and why the burgundy has aged into a richer tone instead of going flat. The weave is dense and regular, with the knot rows visible on the folded back as a tight, even grid, and the selvages and both end finishes are original and sound. A signed Mashad of this size was a commission piece, not stock production, and finding one in this condition, with no restoration and full pile edge to edge, is the reason a rug like this still holds its value.