Fine Antique Persian Sultanabad Handmade Wool Rug BB7251 11'8" × 15'3" $65,000

Among the finest of the antique rugs in our collection, the present example ahs a dark blue field beneath a curvilinear beige trellis of leafy vinery and stylized palmettes within a beige border with finely executed palmette vinery.

History of Sultanabad rugs

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 carpets, established a Persian carpet 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 Persian carpet themselves larger to fit Western-sized rooms. For the more restrained Western taste, traditional designs were recolored to be more subtle and obliging. Traditional local dying techniques were improved and brought up to the standards of the latest methods of the time, creating new possibilities of color and tonality.