Sultanabad Rugs & Carpets

Persian rugs from the town of Sultanabad are located in the northwest province of Arak. It is the administrative center for the area. The province is dry, but it supplies much of the wheat for Tehran and other cities to the east. The town has no long-standing rug weaving tradition and nothing was woven there before about 1870. Production for export began under the auspices of the Persian Tabriz carpet merchants who were looking for a city that would cost them less in overhead for the weaving of room size carpets.

In 1883 the British-Swiss firm, Ziegler and Co. of Manchester, established an office in the town. Ziegler sold English textile goods to the Persian market and remitted the proceeds by means of Russian gold coins to Russia and then by normal banking connections to London. This process was cumbersome at best and the coins were liable to be stolen by highway robbers while in transit. A better way was suggested by a Ziegler staff member, Oscar Strauss: buy carpets with the sale proceeds and send them to the UK where they could be sold at an additional profit. [...]

Persian rugs from the town of Sultanabad are located in the northwest province of Arak. It is the administrative center for the area. The province is dry, but it supplies much of the wheat for Tehran and other cities to the east. The town has no long-standing rug weaving tradition and nothing was woven there before about 1870. Production for export began under the auspices of the Persian Tabriz carpet merchants who were looking for a city that would cost them less in overhead for the weaving of room size carpets.

In 1883 the British-Swiss firm, Ziegler and Co. of Manchester, established an office in the town. Ziegler sold English textile goods to the Persian market and remitted the proceeds by means of Russian gold coins to Russia and then by normal banking connections to London. This process was cumbersome at best and the coins were liable to be stolen by highway robbers while in transit. A better way was suggested by a Ziegler staff member, Oscar Strauss: buy carpets with the sale proceeds and send them to the UK where they could be sold at an additional profit. Strauss soon set up operations to make carpets and that included storage facilities, dye works, offices and staff housing. The earliest known dated (and signed) Ziegler is from 1885, but no carpet factories were built. Rather the pile yarn was pre-dyed and given out, along with foundation materials, to individual household weavers. A cash advance was also included. Large carpets required large looms and, in turn, required special rooms in the houses to be built for their accommodation.

By 1900 Ziegler controlled, through this putting-out process, about 2500 looms. Other firms, American and European, moved in and developed their own facilities. By 1914 there were 3000 carpet looms in Sultanabad alone and many more in the surrounding villages. Nearly $5,000,000 in capital (of that time) was invested in weaving rugs in and around Sultanabad. The 1929 Crash decimated the American market and one by one the foreign firms closed up shop. Ziegler, the largest of them, was gone by the late 1930's. The demand had changed and the Ziegler type of Sultanabad carpet was replaced by the �American� style Sarouk. Ziegler never made Persian Sarouk rugs.

The Ziegler type of Sultanabad was designed locally and usually employs a large scale allover scheme of palmettes, rosettes, arabesques and vines on a light ground. Sometimes a small central medallion organizes the pattern. Ivory, powder blue, straw, pistachio, oyster, and beige are favored field colors. There are no saturated colors. Even the red is a light rust. The borders are broad and scaled in proportion to the field. Sizes tend to run squarish: 12 feet by 15 feet, 14 feet by 18 feet, 16 feet by 22 feet. Some truly enormous carpets were woven to special order, up to 30 feet in length. There are very few scatters and even fewer runners. Gallery formats are also rather uncommon. Although Ziegler was responsible for much of the production, not all the rugs in the Ziegler style are genuine Zieglers in origin. Since there is no effective way to distinguish them, stick with �Sultanabad.�

Antique rugs from Sultanabad are loosely woven with about 50 to 60 asymmetric (Persian) knots per square inch on handspun cotton foundations, two wefts between rows of knots. The pile wool is locally handspun as well. The pile is clipped fairly short and lies down. Antique Sultanabad rugs are prized for their look. All true Sultanabad rugs are antique or will become very shortly. The style was taken up in Egypt in the late 20th century with predominantly ivory ground large carpets in allover patterns. These are the only modern followers of the Sultanabad manner.

The dyes are natural and European synthetics, but Ziegler and the other carpet houses always strove for a light, expansive look. Never does one find saturated colors. The finished carpets were given a light toning wash with lime water to further mellow the colors before being shipped out. The designs were created in-house and were initially provided to the weavers on samplers (wagirehs) about three feet square. Often field motives were on one sampler, borders on another. As with Persian Bidjar samplers, these antique rug samples are themselves quite collectible. Later, the designs were transmitted on scale paper cartoons, several per carpet.

The light colors, large sizes, and expansive traditional patterns have made antique rugs from Sultanabad popular with interior designers searching for an opulent, yet understated, look. They do not compete with either the wall art or the upright furnishings, making them incredibly versatile in almost any context. Sultanabads just went through a period of ultra-vogue and prices rose accordingly. They are back from the Stratosphere, and Ziegler and other antique Persian Sultanabads are available at more realistic valuations.