9'7" x 12'8" Persian Kashmar Pictorial Rug | Garden of Eden Landscape | Deer, Peacocks and Columns

Most Persian rugs are patterns. This 9'7" x 12'8" Kashmar is a painting: a complete garden landscape with a hilltop castle, a river, herds of deer, peacocks, pheasants, fountains, vases and 4 fluted columns, all drawn in wool at 260 to 280 knots per square inch on a cotton foundation. Kashmar weavers call this the Garden of Eden design, and it is the most ambitious composition the town produces, a picture that has to be read scene by scene rather than taken in at a glance. The rug has never been on a floor; the pile is full and even edge to edge, the ivory cotton fringes are clean, and the colors are as sharp on the front as they are on the back. A certificate of authenticity from Rugs.net accompanies the rug.

Design and Motifs

Start at the center. An ivory cartouche with scalloped edges holds the heart of the picture: a stone castle with a tower stands on a rocky hill above a blue river, a stand of dark wine-colored trees rises to its right, a willow and a blue-flowered tree to its left, and a pair of deer graze on the slope between them, with 2 small birds at the waterline. Below the cartouche a pale green panel is filled with pink blossom shrubs, and in it 2 does lie facing each other across a spray of leaves. Below that again a plum panel shows a tree of blue forget-me-nots flanked by 2 gray peacocks with fanned tails, and beneath the peacocks 2 spotted deer leap outward. The bottom of the field is a camel band with a large dark green palmette vase at center, 2 pheasants standing on either side of it, and a pair of ivory vases decorated with red fish. Above the cartouche the picture continues upward: 2 pheasants with speckled plumage face each other across a small plum cartouche, a camel band with a raised fountain follows, and a horizontal panel of a pale ivory landscape shows 3 deer resting by a stream, a walled house, trees and a fenced garden. The left and right sides of the field are 2 vertical scenes, each with a tall fluted column crowned by a fountain basin, standing in front of a sky blue garden of blossom trees, birds and deer, with a checkered royal blue pilaster running the height of the field. Above each column a red arch holds a pale yellow flowering tree. The main border is dark green with an unbroken row of large palmette-and-lotus forms in ivory, gold, blue and camel, framed by sky blue guards with small blue flower clusters and a wide plain plum outer edge, and at each corner of the border a rosette medallion closes the frame.

Colors of This Plum and Camel Kashmar Rug

The outer edge is a deep plum, closer to a ripe damson than to burgundy, and it is the darkest color on the rug, which is why the whole picture seems to float inside a shadow frame. The main border sits on a dark forest green, and the 2 together give the piece a cool, formal setting rare in Persian weaving. Inside, the ground colors change from scene to scene: the central cartouche is a warm ivory cream, the panel below it is a soft celadon green, the peacock panel a plum wine, the top and bottom bands a camel tan, and the 2 side gardens a clear sky blue. That sky blue is the color that lifts the rug, and it returns in the border guards, the checkered pilasters and the water of the river. The drawing inside those grounds uses an ochre gold for the columns, fountains and deer, a royal blue for the pilasters and flowers, a bright magenta and a deep wine red for the blossoms and the vase fish, olive and dark green for the trees, a teal for leaves and small birds, and a soft brown for the outlines of the animals. The back shows every color in a slightly lighter key with no bleeding, and the knot rows are close and even.

Kashmar Weaving and the Garden of Eden Design

Kashmar lies in Khorasan, in the northeast of Persia between Mashad and the desert, and its workshops built their reputation in the 20th century on exactly this kind of rug: large pictorial pieces with columns, vases, animals and landscapes that borrow from the palaces of Persepolis and from the old garden carpets of the Safavid era. The Garden of Eden design is the summit of that tradition. It demands a knot count high enough to draw a deer's leg or a peacock's eye, which is why Kashmar pieces run finer than most Khorasan work, and it demands a weaver who can hold a whole picture in mind across a year at the loom. Rugs like this were made in small numbers and mostly sold to collectors in Europe, and unused examples are hard to find. At 9'7" x 12'8" it sits in the room-size class of 10x13 Persian rugs, and it is a rug that furnishes a room on its own, on the floor or on a wall.