Antique Persian Sultanabad Carpet 13'×18'8" Multicolor Field, Hand-Knotted Wool, Circa 1890

A monumental late 19th-century Persian Sultanabad carpet from around 1890, measuring approximately 396 × 569 cm (about 13'0" × 18'8"). The composition is built on a multicolor field in the formal Sultanabad decorative vocabulary, at a true gallery-format proportion suited to formal long living rooms, grand dining rooms, hotel reception floors, and the largest residential salon spaces. Sultanabad was a major hand-knotting center in the Arak province of west-central Persia (now Iran) in the late 19th century, producing large decorative wool carpets at a scale and quality that put them in continuous demand for European and American interiors. Carpets of this period typically combine allover designs, repeated medallions, and Persian formal vocabularies — Herati, Harshang palmettes, rosettes, and arabesques — on cotton foundations.