3'9" x 5'8" Persian Isfahan Rug | Signed Pictorial Boteh, Kork Wool & Silk on Silk | 500 KPSI

This is a signed master-grade Persian Isfahan, 3'9" x 5'8", knotted in soft kork wool and pure silk on a silk foundation at roughly 500 knots per square inch. It is a true pictorial rug: rather than a repeating pattern, the ivory field is a whole living scene, a paradise garden filled with birds and animals gathered around one enormous curled boteh at its heart. At this knot count the weaver can shade a single peacock feather through five or six colors, and the silk highlights make those details flash as the light moves. The rug is signed in a woven cartouche reading Iran Isfahan, it has never been used, and it ships with a certificate of authenticity. A piece of this fineness is meant to be lived with as art, on the floor of a study or hung on a wall.

Design and Motifs: A Paradise Garden Around a Giant Boteh

The whole composition turns on a single oversized boteh, the curled paisley that is one of the oldest symbols in Persian art, drawn here as a great comma sweeping through the center of the field. Its outline is a river of fine navy and red vinework, and inside it sits a second, smaller world: more birds, blossoming branches, and a scatter of tiny rabbits and hares playing in an ivory clearing. Where the boteh curls back on itself, a small human face, a benevolent mask in the old Safavid tradition, is woven into the scrollwork, a signature flourish that master Isfahan designers hide in their finest pieces. Around this central form the field opens into a flowering thicket: slender trees heavy with pink and red blossom, curving stems, and leafy sprays that fill every inch without ever feeling crowded, because the drawing is so controlled. The framing is just as considered, a broad red main border alive with confronting birds and palmettes, held between ivory guard bands of songbirds and a narrow inner stripe of leaping animals. There is no empty ground anywhere; the eye keeps finding one more creature.

The Animals and Birds in the Field

This is the part to linger over. Presiding over the upper field is a magnificent crested bird with a long sweeping tail, a phoenix-like peacock or rooster rendered in blue, brown, gold, and rose, its plumage picked out feather by feather in silk. Below and around it move a whole aviary: a pair of long-necked cranes or herons wading at the lower edge, ducks and waterbirds among reeds, bright songbirds and hoopoes perched in the blossoming branches, and smaller confronting birds tucked into the border. The four-footed animals are just as varied. Along the bottom a group of gazelles and deer graze, one lowering its head, another springing; a pale ibex or wild goat stands among them, a russet fox slips through the undergrowth, and a darker wolf or jackal crouches nearby. Inside the great boteh, three or four little hares and rabbits sit in the ivory clearing. Scattered through the greenery you will also find butterflies and small darting creatures, and if you look closely, the small woven human face mentioned above, watching over the whole garden. Together they turn the rug into the classic Persian image of paradise, every living thing at peace in one flowering field.

Color: Ivory Ground Lit With Silk

The field is a warm ivory cream, the traditional Isfahan ground, chosen because it lets every other color sing against it. The palette is deep but never harsh: navy and cobalt in the boteh outline and the border ground, a clear madder red carrying the main border and the heart of the paisley, and through the animals and flowers a spread of rose pink, sky blue, olive and sage green, soft gold, and every shade of brown from fawn to chestnut. The silk is used deliberately, in the birds' plumage, the flower heads, and the finer vine lines, so those passages sit just proud of the matte kork wool and catch the light like thread-of-silk embroidery. The effect shifts as you walk around the rug: from one side the boteh reads red and blue, from the other the silk highlights turn silver and pale gold. It is a genuinely luminous piece, formal enough for a traditional room yet delicate enough to read almost like a painting.

Isfahan, the City of the Finest Persian Weaving

Isfahan, in central Persia, was the Safavid capital from the 16th century, and its reputation rests on drawing: the curved line, the flowing vine, and a precision that only works at a very high knot count. A rug like this, kork wool and silk on a silk foundation at around 500 knots per square inch, is exactly the kind of piece that reputation was built on, the format where an Isfahan atelier shows what it can do. It is signed in the field, as the best Isfahan work traditionally is, and you can read more about the city and its weavers in our complete guide to Isfahan rugs. Pieces at this level rarely come to market, and almost never in never-used condition.