Rugsville Sultanabad Classic Vegetable dyes Wool Carpet 8' x 10'

New Zealand wool is the only fibre that takes vegetable dye to the saturation a classical Sultanabad design needs without losing the slight tonal irregularity that gives a hand-knotted rug its patina. The Sultanabad pattern itself was developed in central Persia in the nineteenth century, when European trading houses commissioned village weavers to scale up the dense floral repeats into open, repeating fields built around a quiet medallion. This rug carries that lineage forward in fibre and palette.

Three weavers in India shared the loom for roughly six months. Around 1.7 million Persian-asymmetric knots were tied against a vertical beam, the wool drawn from a thirteen-micron staple chosen for its even uptake of madder, indigo, oak gall, and walnut hull. Each dye bath was matured for two to three weeks in copper vats before the skein was lowered, and every shade in the rug was prepared from plant matter.

The composition

An open ivory field carries an all-over vine in soft madder and faded indigo. There is no central medallion in the conventional sense, only a quiet thickening of the pattern toward the centre. The border is a single deep guard rather than the layered borders that crowd lesser pieces. The colour will continue to shift for a decade. The ivory warms into bone, the madder lightens toward terracotta, and the indigo deepens. A vegetable-dyed Sultanabad arrives ready to start, not complete.

What you are buying

Period Sultanabads with 1900 to 1920 attribution and honest condition trade at Christie's, Sotheby's, and Rippon Boswell between thirty and sixty thousand dollars when they appear at all. This is a new weaving in the same tradition, on the same kind of loom, to the same density, in the same fibre. The rug appreciates with use rather than depreciating.

The piece in a room

8' x 10' (244 x 305 cm) is the canonical living-room scale, anchoring a sectional sofa with the front feet on the rug or sitting beneath an eight-seater dining table without crowding the chairs. Mid-tone walls hold the saturation, and direct sunlight refreshes the dyes that interior light slowly washes out.

Conservation

Rotate a half turn each spring and autumn so light and traffic age the wool evenly. Vacuum weekly with suction only and the beater bar off. Blot spills with a clean cotton cloth at once. A wool-trained conservator should hand-wash the rug every five years. With this care, the piece runs eighty to a hundred years and outlives its first owners.

Reference

• Medium: hand-knotted New Zealand wool on cotton foundation
• Dimensions: 244 x 305 cm (8' x 10')
• Construction: Persian asymmetric knot
• Hands: 3 weavers, ~6 months
• Pile: 10 mm, 13-micron wool
• Dye: vegetable (madder, indigo, oak gall, walnut hull)
• Origin: India

Free shipping across India. Cash on delivery available. 7-day exchange. The rug arrives crated for safe storage and relocation.