Antique Persian Sultanabad Rug BB6728 11'9" × 17'4" $60,000

A late 19th century Persian antique sultanabad rug, the charcoal gray field with an enlarged polychrome palmette and angular vine trellis overall, within a rust angular rosette and serrated leaf 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 carpets, established a Persian rug 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 rugs themselves larger to fit Western-sized rooms.