Kashan Persian Rugs — Hand-Knotted Mohtasham, Dabir & Manchester

Kashan — the classical Persian city rug

Kashan (also written Keshan or Kachan) lies on the old caravan route between Tehran, Isfahan and Yazd. It is the source of the image most people have of a Persian rug: a central medallion with pendants, corner spandrels, a dense floral field and a ground of deep madder red.

The city’s reputation rests on two distinct periods. Under the Safavids, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Kashan produced silk rugs of a quality never really equalled since; the surviving examples are in museums, not in the trade. Production then died out for more than a century. The Kashans you can actually buy come from the second flowering that began in the mid-nineteenth century, when the city’s workshops were re-established and quickly became the benchmark for finely knotted Persian city weaving. For technical and historical background, the Jozan Carpet Encyclopedia is the standard reference on Persian provenance.

The workshop names, and what they actually tell you

Kashan is one of the few Persian origins where the workshop matters as much as the town, so these names are worth knowing before you buy.

• Mohtasham — the best-known workshop of the late nineteenth century. Very fine knotting, a restrained palette of madder red, indigo and ivory, and unusually soft wool. It is also the name most freely applied in the trade: it wants examining rather than believing.
• Dabir — late nineteenth and early twentieth century, known for precise, disciplined medallion drawing.
• Manchester Kashan — roughly 1900 to 1930, when the leading workshops bought worsted yarn spun in Manchester. The English mills produced a long-staple, very evenly spun yarn, and it shows: these pieces have a markedly higher lustre and a softer handle than contemporary Kashans woven from local wool.
• Silk Kashan — small formats in silk on a silk foundation, knotted up to around one million knots per square metre. Usually hung rather than laid.

Reading the design

• Central medallion with pendants top and bottom, and matching corner spandrels — the standard Kashan composition
• Shah Abbasi palmettes — the large stylised blossom named after the Safavid ruler, drawn on scrolling vines
• Tree of life and vase compositions — mostly on prayer-format pieces
• Palette — madder red, ivory, dark indigo, sage green, sometimes camel

Living with a Kashan — an honest note

A Kashan is a formal rug and does not pretend otherwise. The composition is symmetrical and centred: it wants to be seen whole. Put a large sofa across one corner or a coffee table dead centre, and the medallion disappears. In a room where the furniture cannot be arranged around it, an allover pattern without a medallion is usually the happier choice.

The red is emphatic. In a photograph it looks warmer than it does on a grey or very cool floor, and it will dominate a small room. If you like the drawing but not the ground colour, look at ivory-ground Kashans, or at the softer palettes of Sarouk and the vintage pieces.

On antique examples, expect the marks of a long life: lower pile in the walking lines, ends reduced or secured, old repairs. That is normal in a rug of a hundred years or more, and all of it is described individually — but it is also why an antique Kashan is not the rug for a household that wants everything uniform.

At a glance

• Origin: Kashan, central Iran
• Knot density: approximately 250,000 to 360,000 knots per m² in room sizes; up to 1,000,000 in fine silk pieces
• Pile: Kurk wool, imported Manchester worsted on the relevant antique pieces, or silk
• Foundation: cotton warp and weft; silk warp on silk pieces
• Knot: asymmetric Persian knot
• Common formats: from 135 × 205 cm to palace sizes above 500 × 330 cm
• Underfloor heating: suitable
• Documentation: written assessment of origin, material and knot density with every rug

Care

Vacuum in the direction of the pile at moderate suction, with the rotating brush bar off the fringes. Turn the rug end for end once a year: a finely knotted wool pile shows uneven wear and fading sooner than a coarse weave. Blot, never rub. Washing, repair and restoration we do ourselves, antique pieces included. Customers in Germany can use our hand washing, repair and restoration service, with collection and return in the Würzburg region; elsewhere we are glad to help you find a specialist nearby.

Related collections

Persian rugs overview · Isfahan · Tabriz · Qum silk · Sarouk · Palatial carpets