Rug No. has found its new home.
Every rug we sell is one of a kind, so that piece is gone. Here are others in the same spirit, or tell Rug Finder what you are looking for.
Mashhad Rugs
From Mashhad, the great weaving city of northeastern Persia, come large, room-filling rugs in warm madder reds and flowing floral designs. They were made to furnish generous spaces and have aged into something softer than any new carpet. Each is a single vintage piece, so measure your room first, then find the one that fits.
Mashhad: generous floral drawing from northeast Persia
Mashhad is the great city of northeastern Persia, and its carpet workshops have long specialized in large, richly drawn floral pieces. A Mashhad is usually built around a substantial central medallion with dense floral work filling the field around it, most often on a red ground with ivory and blue carrying the drawing. The scale is generous; these were carpets made for large rooms.
The wool takes light well, and the knotting is fine enough to hold curved, flowing drawing without the pattern breaking up.
The city is the capital of Khorasan province, and its workshops are known for large carpets with a curvilinear medallion and a dense floral field. The style is close to Kashan and Kerman in spirit but usually larger in scale and a little softer in the drawing.
The classic Mashhad palette is a deep red, often shading to burgundy, with navy, ivory and touches of green, and the pile is low. Because the city specialized in room-sized and oversized carpets, vintage Mashhad rugs are one of the best sources of genuinely large hand-knotted Persian pieces at a reasonable price.
Our Mashhad collection is mostly oversized. If you are furnishing a large living room or an open-plan space and want a single traditional carpet to hold it together, Mashhad is usually the first group to look at.
Mashhad features
- Ground: deep red or burgundy on almost all of ours; ivory and blue grounds are rare here.
- Drawing: curvilinear florals, palmettes and vine work around a full central medallion.
- Scale: Mashhad is a strong source of genuinely large room-sized carpets.
- Handle: a low, dense wool pile with a slight sheen, on a cotton foundation.
Rooms that suit a Mashhad
Mashhad carpets are at their best given room to be seen. A large Mashhad in a formal living room or a dining room, with the medallion clear of the table or the coffee table, is a genuinely impressive floor. In smaller spaces the scale of the drawing can feel cramped, so if the room is tight, look for a piece where the field pattern is finer.
Softening with time
The reds soften toward brick and rose, the ivories warm, and the blues soften. Because the wool is dense, wear shows as a gentle sheen along the walking line long before it shows as thinness. Every Mashhad here was professionally washed and inspected before we listed it.
Mashhad, compared
Is a Mashhad similar to a Kashan?
They share the floral, medallion-centered approach. Mashhad generally draws at a slightly larger scale and can feel a little more open; Kashan is often denser and more tightly worked. Both suit the same kinds of room.
Are large vintage Persian carpets hard to find?
Genuinely large pieces in good condition are much scarcer than mid sizes, which is one of the reasons Mashhad is worth knowing about. An oversized Mashhad in good condition rarely stays on the site for long.
Will the pattern fight a patterned sofa?
Probably. A Mashhad is a lead instrument. Give it plain upholstery and it will make the room; put it under a floral sofa and both will suffer.
First steps
Measure first, because scale is where these rugs either succeed or struggle. Then decide on the ground color and how much open floor the medallion will have. Every Mashhad on this page is the only one of its kind.
Most of them are room rugs, and red is the reason: the Mashhad guide.