5'1" x 8'2" Persian Isfahan Silk Rug | Tree of Life Hunting Garden | Approx. 516-581 KPSI

This is a picture rug, not a pattern rug. Across a field of midnight navy the weaver has drawn a paradise garden: flowering trees rising from the lower border, stags and gazelles standing under them, white hares crouched at the base, pheasants and long-tailed phoenix birds threaded through the branches, and a small light blue cartouche medallion holding the center. The knot count runs to approximately 516-581 knots per square inch, which is what allows an animal's eye, a beak or a single leaf tip to read cleanly at this scale. Measuring 5'1" x 8'2" with a silk pile on a cotton foundation, the rug is in excellent condition with even pile, straight sides and full ivory fringe at both ends. A certificate of authenticity is issued with every rug we ship, confirming the origin, the materials and the hand-knotted construction.

Design and Motifs

The composition is built on an arch. An ivory mihrab-style crown fills the top of the field, with a gold and blue flower vase set beneath it and slender cypress-like stems rising out of the vase, birds perched to either side in perfect mirror. Below that the field opens into an all-over garden: blossoming fruit trees with brown trunks, small 8 petal rosettes, cornflower sprays and curling vine work, all arranged in strict left-to-right symmetry. Animal life is everywhere once you look for it. Two facing phoenixes with banded blue tails sit above the medallion, 4 deer graze in the corners of the lower field, a fox chases a hare, and a second gold and olive vase anchors the bottom of the design. The main border repeats the theme on a light blue ground with rearing beasts back to back, roosters inside palmette cartouches and hares running through the vine, contained by ivory and camel guard bands and a fine navy outer stripe.

A Midnight Navy Field Against Cornflower Blue Borders

The color scheme works on contrast between two very different blues. The field is a deep midnight navy, almost black where the pile lies away from the light and clearly blue where it lies toward it, and it makes the drawing glow rather than merely sit on top of it. The wide main border is a bright cornflower blue with a touch of turquoise in it, which lifts the whole rug and keeps the navy from reading heavy. Between the two, the ivory arch and the ivory guard stripes act as a bright frame. The drawing itself is carried in warm gold, honey, camel and pale wheat, with olive green in the leaves, soft rust and terracotta in the palmettes, small sparks of wine red at the flower centers and pale turquoise in the cornflower heads. The medallion is a light sky blue filled with gold arabesque. In a room the effect changes hour to hour, since the silk pile reflects one way from the fringe end and another from the side, as the angled photographs show.

Isfahan: The Weaving City and the Quality of the Weave

Isfahan sits in central Persia and has been a court weaving center since the Safavid workshops of the 16th century. Its reputation has never rested on bright color or bold scale; it rests on drawing, on the curved line, the flowing vine and the precision of a repeated motif, and that only becomes possible above roughly 400 knots per square inch. At approximately 516-581 KPSI this piece is comfortably inside that range, which is why the animals have expression instead of outline. The workshop tradition described in the complete guide to Isfahan rugs is visible here in the balance of the layout and the discipline of the guard borders. The silk pile is cut low and dense, so it takes light like satin and holds detail the way a wool pile cannot, a quality explained further in our guide to Persian silk rugs. The back, shown here with a ruler across the weave, is tight and regular, with the knot nodes lined up evenly row after row.