What is a Kashan rug?
A Kashan rug is a hand-knotted carpet woven in Kashan, central Iran, recognized for its classic medallion design, harmonious deep-red and ivory palette, and knot counts ranging from 100 to 800 per square inch. Kashan workshop weaving traces back to the 16th-century Safavid court.
What is a Kashan rug?
The classic medallion of central Iran.
Kashan is a small city on the edge of the central Iranian desert that has woven rugs since the Safavid era. A Kashan rug is built on the classic medallion-and-corner composition: a central medallion floats on a deep madder-red ground, with ivory corner spandrels and a navy palmette border. The drawing is harmonious rather than virtuosic — restrained, balanced, calibrated.
Kashan workshops are famous for kork wool, the fine fleece from the neck and shoulders of mountain lambs. Knot counts run 100 to 800 per square inch on cotton foundations; the rarest court pieces are silk on silk.
From Safavid court to American parlor.
Kashan’s rug-weaving heritage traces to the 16th and 17th centuries, when imperial Safavid commissions produced silk court carpets for the Shah and for diplomatic gift. Several of the most celebrated Safavid carpets in major museum collections — the Metropolitan, the V&A, the Louvre — are attributed to Kashan workshops of this period.
After a decline in the 18th century, Kashan was revived in the late 19th century under master workshops like Mohtasham, whose pieces became the gold standard for fine Persian weaving and are still the benchmark today. Through the late-19th and early-20th-century export boom, Kashan rugs filled the great American parlors and dining rooms. Workshops continue today, weaving the classic medallion in the same kork wool with much the same drawing.
How a Kashan is built.
Kashan workshops knot the rug on a cotton warp and weft using the asymmetric Persian knot. Workshop knot count runs 100 to 800 per square inch — antique Kashans typically 200 to 400, fine modern workshops higher. The drawing is rendered from a cartoon by the master designer, then translated knot by knot by experienced weavers.
The pile is kork wool, hand-spun, vegetable-dyed in the iconic Kashan palette: madder root for the deep red field, indigo for the navy medallion and border, walnut hull for brown, and undyed cream for the ivory corners. The wool takes the dye richly, which is why an antique Kashan has the depth and saturation it does.
How to identify a Kashan.
- Design
Central medallion with corner pendants on a deep red ground. Ivory corner spandrels frame the medallion. Vine-and-palmette field, restrained and harmonious.
- Palette
Deep madder red as the dominant field, ivory in the corners, indigo navy in the medallion and border. The whole composition is calibrated, never restless.
- Border
A classic main border of palmette-and-vine, almost always on navy, with two or three narrow ivory and gold guard borders. Symmetric and quiet.
- Pile
Medium pile of fine kork lambs-wool. The wool has a slight sheen and softens beautifully with age. Less photographic than a Tabriz; richer in feel.
- Fringe
Cotton fringe, an extension of the warp. Usually plaited at the ends. Modest, even on the largest palace pieces.
Four variants you will see.
Kashan pieces appear in scatter sizes, room sizes (8×10, 9×12, 10×14), and the great palace formats. The four primary construction variants:
Antique Kashan
Late-19th to early-20th c. Vegetable dyes, kork wool, classic medallion. The collector standard.
Workshop Kashan
Contemporary fine workshop weaving. 200–800 knots/in², classic drawing.
Mohtasham Kashan
Late-19th c. master workshop. Among the most prized antique Kashans on the market.
Silk Kashan
Court-grade silk on silk. Rare, extremely valuable, often pictorial or prayer-niche.
Caring for a Kashan rug.
Kashan rugs are hand-washed by our master artisan, never machine-cleaned. The kork wool and deep madder dye demand a measured hand-wash with full dye testing before water touches the rug. Antique Kashans, especially Mohtasham-era pieces, receive the antique wash, the slower hand-controlled bath calibrated to vegetable-dye chemistry. Full process on our Persian rug cleaning page.
Closest cousins to a Kashan.
Three Persian traditions every Kashan collector should know.
Tabriz
Workshop weaving from northwest Iran; the technical peer of Kashan in the medallion tradition.
Read the Tabriz guideIsfahan
Court-style atelier weaving from central Iran; finer foundation, often on silk warp.
Read the Isfahan guideSarouk
West-central Persian workshop with jewel-tone palette; American-market floral cousin.
Read the Sarouk guideLetters from across the Northeast.
A few of the rugs we've cared for — and the families who trusted us with them.
“They returned an heirloom Tabriz — the colors look exactly as my grandmother described them.”
“A 1920s Heriz I thought was beyond saving came back better than the day my parents bought it.”
“Our clients trust us with eight-figure homes. Horizon is the only atelier I send their rugs to.”
More from Horizon.
Other ateliers, every service we offer, and the rest of our story — a few directions to explore.
Bring us your Kashan.
Antique, Mohtasham, workshop, or silk — whichever Kashan you own, we hand-wash with the process appropriate to its construction. Complimentary pickup from Manhattan, the Hamptons, Westchester, Greenwich, and Stamford.
By hand · By the Cohen family · By appointment