9'6 x 12'5 Persian Isfahan Rug | Shah Abbas Allover Floral | Lobed Navy Medallion | 220 to 240 KPSI

A truly fine Isfahan rug doesn't shout. It draws you in. Look at this one for a moment and you start to notice that the lobed navy medallion at the center isn't sitting on top of the field, it's growing out of it, dissolving in and out of the dense floral lattice that surrounds it on every side. There is no empty space. Every square inch of the crimson ground is alive with palmettes, rosettes, saz leaves, and curling vines, all rendered in the impossibly fine line work that only a 240 KPSI weave allows. This is Isfahan at the level the city has been famous for since the Safavid court made it the capital of Persia in the seventeenth century. To understand why Isfahan rugs occupy the position they do in the collector market, see our complete guide to Isfahan rugs.

Design and Motifs

The composition is the classical Shah Abbas allover, named for the seventeenth century Safavid shah whose court ateliers codified this design language. At the visual center sits a lobed navy medallion with an ivory and pale blue floral core, flanked above and below by twin pendant cartouches that extend the vertical axis. What makes this piece special is what happens around the medallion: rather than leaving the field open in the Lavar Kerman manner, the Isfahan weaver fills every inch with a rhythmic procession of palmette heads, scrolling acanthus leaves, eight petal rosettes, and the long curling saz leaves that are the signature of Safavid floral design. The four corners are filled with navy and ivory spandrels containing miniature versions of the same vocabulary, so the eye reads the entire surface as a single unified garden rather than as separate compartments.

Colors and Placement

The palette is the classic Isfahan triad. The field is a deep, saturated crimson, the main border is dark navy filled with ivory and sky blue palmettes, and the secondary borders are ivory and pale blue with red and navy floral repeats. Within this framework the weaver has worked in soft yellows, sage greens, salmon pink, copper, and pale celadon, all of them visible at close range and woven so finely they read almost like brushstrokes. At 9'6 x 12'5 the rug is a true 9 x 12 to 10 x 13, the standard formal living room and dining room size in American homes, also ideal for a master bedroom under a king bed with the foot of the bed sitting on the rug, a paneled library, or a substantial home office. The crimson and navy combination grounds dark wood furniture and reads as both warm and formal, working equally well with traditional, transitional, and English country interiors.

Origin and Construction

Isfahan sits in central Iran and has been the most prestigious weaving city in Persia since the Safavid period, when Shah Abbas the Great built the city's grand square and turned its court ateliers into the most refined rug workshops in the world. The tradition has continued unbroken into the modern era, with the finest contemporary Isfahan rugs reaching 600 to 800 KPSI and beyond, woven in pure kork wool on cotton or silk warps. This piece is hand-knotted in 100% wool pile on a cotton foundation at 220 to 240 knots per square inch, a density that places it firmly in the fine weaving range, where the resolution is high enough to render every curling palmette, every petal, every internal vein on a saz leaf with full clarity. The rug is in flawless brand new never used condition, with full pile, full fringes, and tight selvages. To understand why kork wool from this region produces the fineness and luster you see here, our guide to wool versus silk rugs walks through the differences in fiber, dye, and construction that separate the top tier from everything else.