11' x 14'8" Persian Soltanabad Rug | Salmon Coral All Over Floral | Antique 1930s

This is a genuine 1930's Soltanabad, woven in west central Persia and now close to a century old, and it has come through that century with its pile still full and its ends and sides original. At 11' x 14'8" it is a true room size piece, big enough to carry a large living room or a long dining table without the furniture crowding the border, which puts it squarely in the group of oversize Persian rugs that are getting harder to find in this age and this condition. The wool is the reason to buy it: soft, glossy, still holding the oil that makes old Persian wool shine differently under lamplight than anything woven recently. Every rug we ship carries our certificate of authenticity.

Design and Motifs

The drawing is the classic Soltanabad answer to a large floor: a continuous all over floral field with just enough structure to give the eye a center. A navy lobed medallion sits at the middle, filled with a gold 8 petal rosette, paired teal palmettes and split leaf scrollwork. Above and below it run a small navy cartouche and a navy pendant, and the 4 corners are anchored by navy leaf shaped ornaments rather than heavy solid spandrels, so the field stays open and the pattern keeps breathing. Everything between those elements is vine work: lotus palmettes, serrated leaves, curled arabesques, small multi petal rosettes and slender flowering sprays, all drawn in a relaxed village hand rather than a rigid city repeat, which is why the two halves of the field mirror each other loosely instead of exactly. The wide main border carries alternating palmettes and rosettes on a navy ground, linked by a continuous vine, and it is fenced on both sides by narrow reciprocal guard stripes, with a green blue outer guard band finishing the edge cleanly in the corner photographs.

Color: Antique Salmon Coral Against Deep Indigo

The field is a warm salmon coral, the shade old madder dye settles into after decades, and it shifts gently across the width with natural abrash, lighter and pinker in places, deeper and closer to terracotta in others. Against it the ornament is drawn in olive green, sage, soft teal, saffron yellow and a clear pale blue green, with small hits of ivory and blush pink in the flower centers. The borders reverse the balance completely: a deep indigo navy ground, almost black where the pile falls one way and bright cobalt where it falls the other, with palmettes worked in coral, gold, sage and turquoise. The medallion repeats that navy, so the center and the frame speak to each other across the salmon field. The close-up pile photographs show how saturated these dyes still are at the base of the knot, and the olive and saffron in particular are far greener and more golden in hand than the flat overall shots suggest.

Soltanabad Origin and Weaving Quality

Soltanabad, the old name for the district around Arak in west central Persia, was built around rug production, and from the late 19th century into the 1930's its village looms supplied the large decorative floor rugs that Europe and America wanted. Those looms are the source of the whole family of Persian Mahal rugs and of the Sarough weaving that came out of the same district, and this piece sits right in that tradition: a heavy, honest wool weave on a cotton foundation, knotted at a village count rather than a fine city count, with a generous pile depth that is exactly why a rug this old still walks like a new one. The wool from this region takes dye beautifully and wears slowly, and the loose symmetry of the drawing tells you a weaver was working from a design she knew rather than a knot by knot cartoon. If you want to understand what puts a piece like this in the 1930's, our guide on how to date an antique Oriental rug walks through the dyes, the wear pattern and the back of the weave.