Rugsville Sultanabad Vegetable dyes Classic Wool Carpet 9' x 12'

Sultanabad as a design language opened the field. Earlier Persian classical carpets had filled every square centimetre of ground with incident. The Sultanabad weavers loosened the palmette repeat, dropped the dense lattice, and let the field breathe so the eye could rest between motifs. That breathing was the innovation that made the carpets readable in Western drawing rooms, and it is the discipline this rug holds to.

Four weavers shared the vertical loom for close to six months. The pile is hand-spun New Zealand wool on a cotton foundation, tied row by row in Persian asymmetric knots. Dye lots were prepared from madder root, indigo, walnut hull, and oak gall, each one matured in copper vessels for two to three weeks before the wool was lowered. After clipping, the rug spent four days in sun and a long bath in mineral solution that mellowed the saturation toward antique register.

The composition

An open ivory ground holding palmette and vine in measured intervals. The principal accents are a faded madder rust and an indigo so deep it reads charcoal in shadow. The border is a single deep guard band, restrained, narrow. The field carries faint horizontal abrash from neighbouring dye lots sitting side by side, the natural fingerprint of plant-dye work. Over the first decade the rust will lighten and the indigo will warm, the slow exchange the lineage was built to perform.

What you are buying

Period Sultanabad carpets from 1890 to 1920 in this scale and condition carry estimates of forty to ninety thousand US dollars at Christie's, Sotheby's, and the European rug specialists when they appear. This rug is woven on the same loom architecture, in the same fibre, to the same density. At a fraction of the auction comparable it appreciates with use rather than depreciating.

The piece in a room

9' x 12' (274 x 366 cm) is the canonical drawing-room scale. The composition reads at distance as a warm wash and resolves into incident on approach. The rug pairs with walnut, brass, vellum lampshades, oxblood leather, and a single large painting rather than a wall of small ones. Mid-tone plaster walls hold the saturation steady.

Conservation

Half-turn the rug each spring and autumn. Vacuum weekly, suction only. Blot spills at once with clean cotton, never rub. Hand-wash by a trained wool conservator every six years. Cared for this way the piece runs ninety years in regular use and outlives its first owners.

Reference

• Medium: hand-knotted New Zealand wool on cotton foundation
• Dimensions: 274 x 366 cm (9' x 12')
• Construction: Persian asymmetric knot
• Hands: 4 weavers, ~6 months
• Pile: hand-spun wool
• Dye: vegetable (madder, indigo, walnut, oak gall)
• Origin: India

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