Authentic 19th Century Persian Sultanabad Red Handmade Wool Rug BB7191 13'2" × 17'2" $70,000

A fine example from our collection of late 19th century Persian Sultanabad carpets, the sand field with a palmette and leafy floral vinery trellis overall within a muted orange palmette and scrolling vinery border.

The appeal of Sultanabads to Western eyes is not the result of random chance. In 1883, Ziegler and Co. of Manchester, England, an Anglo-Swiss manufacturer, importer, and distributor of Persian antique carpets, established a Persian carpets workshop in Sultanabad, Persia, an area now known as Arak. Intending to export to Europe and the United States of America, Ziegler and Co. employed designers from major Western department stores, such as B. Altman and Co. of New York and Liberty of London, to adapt traditional sixteenth and seventeenth-century Safavid designs by making the designs larger in keeping with the style of the early Arts and Crafts movement and made the antique Persian rugs themselves larger to fit Western-sized rooms.