Rugsville Traditional Wool Rust & Ivory Carpet 9' x 12'

Rust on ivory is the colour set that the Sultanabad weavers of central Persia turned into an export language for the British and American drawing rooms of the 1890s. The ground is the colour of new wool washed in walnut, and the field carries the warm iron-oxide red that the local madder beds gave up after a long maturation in copper. The piece in front of you is woven inside that same tradition by a studio working from antique cartoons rather than commercial pattern books.

Three weavers shared the loom for about six months in India. The wool was hand-carded and spun in the same village it was washed and dyed. Around 2.6 million Persian asymmetric knots were tied through cotton warp, every one set by hand against a vertical beam. Dyes were prepared from madder root, walnut hull, and indigo in copper vats and matured for two weeks before the wool was lowered, the slow-set process that gives vegetable-dyed Sultanabad work its colour depth.

The composition

An ivory ground carries a wide all-over vine in rust, broken by occasional palmettes in muted indigo. There is no central medallion. The pattern repeats with the irregular grace of plant-based dye, the rust slightly different in each section depending on which bath the wool came from. The border is a single wide band of rust carrying paired ivory boteh. Over a decade the rust deepens into terracotta and the ivory warms into honey.

What you are buying

All-over Sultanabad-tradition carpets in vegetable-dyed wool at this scale move through European auction in the range of twenty to forty thousand US dollars when they appear with sound condition. The piece you are looking at is a new weaving on cotton foundation, in hand-spun wool, from natural dye baths. It functions as a working object on the floor and as an asset that holds its place on the secondary market for decades.

The piece in a room

9' x 12' (274 x 366 cm) anchors a formal living room. The all-over field reads best with furniture floated above it rather than pushed to the edges; you want the rust pattern visible around the seating. Pair with cream upholstery, walnut, brass, and stone. The palette warms a north-facing room and softens the hard light of a south-facing one.

Conservation

Rotate twice a year. Vacuum weekly with the beater bar off. Address spills with a dry cotton blot, never a sideways wipe. Plan a professional wash every five years with a conservator who works in vegetable-dyed pile. The rug runs eighty years cared for properly and develops a patina the loom alone cannot give it.

Reference

• Medium: hand-knotted wool on cotton foundation
• Dimensions: 274 x 366 cm (9' x 12')
• Construction: Persian asymmetric knot
• Hands: 3 weavers, 6 months
• Pile: 10 mm hand-spun wool
• Dye: vegetable (madder, walnut, indigo)
• Origin: India

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