Description

This antique Sarouk rug dates to around 1900. It was made in the area around the central Persian city of Sultanabad.

It is unusual in a number of ways: it is very finely worked in an accomplished weave, the wool is excellent with a silky feel, and the design is finely and elegantly drawn with some outstanding features like the sophisticated border, a guard stripe employing small triangles or the S shapes in the minor borders flanking the main border on a dark blue ground, and above all it is relatively small in size. This size is referred to as Zaronim in Iran.

The central medallion with an eight lobed flower head in the middle is set on a warm red ground. The white stepped outline sets it off from the surrounding red of the field which is filled with delicately drawn floral sprigs. Similar floral designs decorate the white spandrels.

Heinrich Jacoby, in his seminal book How to Know Oriental Carpets and Rugs, says about these rugs: “those  closely knotted and closely clipped products of the Sultanabad countryside, made exclusively with vegetable dyes, which, despite their short depth of pile, are, on account of the great excellence of their wool, practically indestructible.” (English edition, edited by R.J. La Fontaine, London, George Allen & Unwin, 1962, page 126).

This is a sweet small rug of outstanding quality and a rare to find survivor of a long tradition.