Rugsville Ziegler Traditional Blue Wool Carpet 9' x 12'

By the late 1800s the workshops at Sultanabad in western Iran were producing the carpets that defined the Anglo-American drawing room, and a Swiss firm called Ziegler and Company had set up a buying office in Tabriz to commission softer, opener fields for export. The pattern in this Ziegler is a direct descendant of that lineage, holding the open botanical repeat that distinguishes Ziegler from the denser classical Persian designs and resolving it in a calm blue ground that sits well in contemporary interiors without losing the historical authority of the source.

Three to four weavers shared the loom for roughly five months. The pile is hand-knotted wool on a cotton foundation. The blue ground was built in a fermented indigo bath, lifted in stages so the colour oxidised cleanly. The corner-to-corner vine work uses madder and weld for the rust and ochre touches that animate the composition. Each skein dyes slightly differently, which is why the field carries the abrash variation antique Sultanabads are prized for.

The composition

A central medallion in faded ochre on a softly varied blue ground. Vine work in cream and rust runs corner to corner, broken only by a restrained guard border in deeper indigo. The composition reads as open and architectural rather than as densely floral. Over the next decade the blue will lighten in the most-walked areas, the rust will deepen, and the cream will warm into bone.

What you are buying

Antique Sultanabads with comparable colour and condition trade at Christie's and Sotheby's between $25,000 and $45,000 when they appear at all. This is a new weaving in the same tradition, on the same kind of loom, in the same fibre. The rug appreciates with use rather than depreciating, and the vegetable dyes continue to oxidise toward their final saturation across the first decade.

The piece in a room

9' x 12' (274 x 366 cm) is the canonical drawing-room scale. The blue ground holds a ten-seat dining table or a U-shaped sectional above it. Pairs with bone walls, brass lighting, oxblood and tan leather, and walnut floors. A single large abstract canvas in warm tones above the primary seating completes the composition.

Conservation

Rotate a half turn each spring and autumn. Weekly suction vacuum, beater bar off. Blot spills with cotton; never rub. Hand-wash by a wool-trained conservator every five years. With this care the rug runs eighty to a hundred years and outlives its first owners.

Reference

• Medium: hand-knotted wool on cotton foundation
• Dimensions: 274 x 366 cm (9' x 12')
• Construction: Persian asymmetric knot
• Hands: 3-4 weavers, 5 months
• Pile: 8 mm
• Dye: vegetable (indigo, madder, weld)
• Origin: India

Free shipping across India. Cash on delivery available. 7-day exchange. Arrives crated for safe transit and re-usable for storage.