12'2" x 20'11" Persian Kerman Rug | Nemati | Ardabil Design Navy Star Medallion with Mosque Lamps | Oversize Palace Size | About 60 Years Old
Few designs in the history of weaving carry the weight of the Ardabil carpet, and this 12'2" x 20'11" Persian Kerman takes it on at full palace scale. A butter yellow star medallion with 16 points blazes from the center of a deep navy field, ringed by red, gold and turquoise cartouches, with an ornate mosque lamp hanging toward each end. It comes from the Nemati workshop in Kerman and was hand-knotted about 60 years ago in fine Kerman wool on a cotton foundation, at 240 to 260 knots per square inch. Rugs of this age and weave are simply not made anymore, yet this one has never been used. The pile is full and the colors are so fresh it could pass for a rug finished this year. It comes with our certificate of authenticity.
Design and Motifs
The center is a large star medallion with 16 points, its butter yellow ground covered in a lace of fine vines, sky blue arabesques and tiny blossoms, with a small lobed red and navy rosette at its heart. Around it, 16 ogival cartouches radiate outward like the rays of the sun. Some are cherry red within gold rings, some turquoise within red rings, others gold inside red, and each holds its own small arabesque of flowers. Toward each end of the field, a mosque lamp hangs on fine cords: a salmon and turquoise vessel painted with flowers, with an ivory pendant below. The navy ground between them is packed with an endless garden of palmettes, rosettes, lotus blossoms and curling leaves in every shade. In the 4 corners, ivory quarter medallions are filled with a burgundy vine lattice. The main border is navy, set with alternating ivory quatrefoil cartouches and long salmon cartouches, each finely detailed. It sits between gold guard borders of blue arabesque scrolls and pink blossoms, with narrow red rosette stripes inside and a plain navy edge outside.
The Colors: Navy, Butter Yellow and Cherry Red
The field is a deep navy, almost midnight, and it gives every color on top of it a jewel-like glow. Butter yellow, soft and warm, fills the great star medallion and lights up the whole center of the rug, while ivory brightens the corner medallions and the border quatrefoils. Cherry red is the strongest accent, used in the cartouches, their rings and the fine vine stems that run through the field. Turquoise and aqua cool the palette in the cartouches, the mosque lamps and countless leaves. Kerman weavers are famous for a wide, painterly range of colors, and this rug shows why: salmon and rose pink, gold and ochre, sky blue, lavender and forest green all appear, placed so carefully that nothing clashes. After roughly 60 years, every one of these colors is still crisp and saturated. The fringe is natural ivory cotton.
Kerman Weaving and the Ardabil Design
Kerman, in southeast Persia, is renowned for soft, lustrous wool, refined floral drawing and one of the widest color palettes in Persian weaving. Its workshops have long taken on the great classical designs, and the Ardabil, with its radiating star, cartouches and hanging lamps, is among the most demanding of them. Weaving it at more than 20 feet long takes a workshop that can keep thousands of small motifs perfectly mirrored across the whole surface. The Nemati workshop did exactly that here, and the older Kerman weave, with its dense, springy wool and generous pile, is something today's looms no longer reproduce. Among oversize Persian rugs, a never-used Kerman of this age and design is a rare find. It is made for a grand living room, a formal dining hall or a great room, and it is ready to serve for generations more.
