6' x 9' Silk Mohtasham Oriental Rug | Star Medallion Design | Signed Cartouche, Hand-Knotted in China

This is a full silk piece, knotted by hand on a silk foundation, and the light does the talking: walk around it and the rust red field shifts from deep garnet to a lit-up cherry while the medallion ground moves between pale aqua and a stronger turquoise. The drawing follows the classical Mohtasham layout, a tight all-over floral field interrupted by a single commanding star medallion, and it is executed at a knot count fine enough to hold hairline vine work and four color petals a quarter of an inch across. One end border carries a woven cartouche reading "Kourosh". The rug is new, never used, and ships with a certificate of authenticity confirming it as a genuine hand-knotted Oriental rug. At this scale it is one of the easiest pieces to place, sitting naturally with other 6 x 9 area rugs under a seating group or a modest dining table.

Design and Motifs

The center is an 8 point star medallion built in layers: a small rosette core, a ring of navy and cream palmettes, then serrated red cartouche lobes that push outward into a pale turquoise ground scattered with small blossoms and comma-shaped leaves. Above and below, two pendant finials extend the medallion along the length of the rug. The surrounding rust field is filled edge to edge with fine vine work, rosettes and lanceolate leaves, and it is broken into a compartmented frame of ivory and gold panels near the ends, with turquoise squares set into the 4 corners, each holding its own miniature medallion. The corner spandrels repeat the field flowers over a soft green ground. The border system runs several bands deep: a navy main border of alternating quatrefoil cartouches and palmette rosettes, flanked by gold, ivory and olive green guard stripes with a running vine. Every line is drawn as a curve rather than a step, which is only possible at this density of knotting, and the reverse in the last photograph shows how cleanly the design reads through to the back.

Color: Rust Red, Turquoise, Navy and Green

The palette is a three way conversation. The field is a warm rust red, closer to brick and garnet than to fire engine, and because the pile is silk it reads lighter along one axis and deeper along the other. Against it sits the medallion ground in a pale robin's egg turquoise, cool and slightly greyed, the single element that makes this rug feel less formal than most classical medallion designs. Framing both is a deep midnight navy border, dark enough that the pink, peach, apricot and sky blue flowers inside the cartouches glow against it. Secondary colors carry real weight here: olive and apple green in the guard bands and spandrels, honey gold in the wide inner band, ivory outlining nearly every motif so the drawing stays legible, plus small hits of black in the medallion lobes and the corner panels for depth. The fringe is a soft silvery ivory. In a room with warm wood, brass or cream upholstery the rust dominates; under cooler daylight the turquoise and navy come forward.

Origin and Weaving Quality

This rug was hand-knotted in China, where the finest silk weaving workshops have spent decades mastering the classical medallion vocabulary, and it is the Mohtasham pattern that they have chosen to reproduce here, a design tradition named for the master weaver whose medallion compositions became the benchmark for formal floral layouts. The quality markers are all present: a silk warp and weft that lets the weaver pack knots tightly enough for curved outlines, a low even clip that shows the drawing without fuzz, straight selvages, and a back that is flat, supple and tight with no lazy lines. Silk pile behaves differently from wool. It has almost no crush memory, it reflects light directionally so the rug changes tone as you move, and it rewards a low pile height with a sheen that no wool rug can imitate. In a 6 x 9 this is a piece for a low traffic setting, a formal sitting room, a bedroom or a study, where the surface can be seen rather than walked over daily, and it will stay exactly as crisp as it is now.