12' x 15' Soltanabad Oriental Rug | Slate Gray All-Over Palmette Design | Hand-Knotted Wool, Brand New

At 12' x 15' this is a true room-filling piece, 180 square feet of hand-knotted wool that will sit under a full seating group with floor to spare on all 4 sides. The field is a cool slate gray with a blue cast, drawn edge to edge with an open Soltanabad pattern and framed by a wide sand-ivory border. It is brand new and never used, with a clean even pile, a cotton foundation, and the tight back seen in the folded-corner photo. Buyers looking at oversize 12x15 rugs rarely find this much drawing at this price, and every rug we ship leaves here with a certificate of authenticity confirming it is hand-knotted.

Design and Motifs

There is no central medallion here. Instead the weaver worked a repeating all-over design built from 3 recurring elements: large serrated sunburst rosettes with striped burgundy and cream petals, squared cream cartouches holding a single blossom on a deep burgundy ground, and tall shield-shaped palmettes set on thin vine stems. Between them run clusters of small cruciform blossoms, angular leaf sprays and a light tracery of stems that connects the whole field without ever crowding it. The drawing is deliberately village-angular rather than curvilinear, with the lines squared off at the joints, which is exactly what the Soltanabad idiom calls for. The wide main border carries a meandering scroll of alternating palmettes and rounded blossoms on ivory, flanked by narrow guard stripes of running vine, and the corners resolve cleanly instead of being cut short.

The Slate Gray Palette in Detail

The ground color is the reason to buy this rug. It reads as a soft slate gray with a denim-blue undertone, and because the wool was dyed in batches there is gentle horizontal striation across the field, visible in the close-up, that keeps the large expanse alive rather than flat. Against it the motifs are drawn in 5 supporting tones: a sand to ivory cream that carries the border and the squared cartouches, a deep burgundy-rust used for petal stripes and blossom centers, a pale powder blue that echoes the field a few shades lighter, a muted olive-brown in the leaves, and touches of dusty pink in the smaller stems. Nothing is high contrast, so the overall effect is quiet and slightly faded in feel, which is why this palette works over pale oak, wide-plank gray floors and dark walnut alike.

Made in India: Soltanabad Design, Modern Weaving Quality

This piece was hand-knotted in India, which is where most of the world's best contemporary hand-knotted work is now produced. The looms there have taken over the classical repertoire, and a large-format Soltanabad pattern like this one is one of the designs they weave best: the scale of the drawing suits a big loom, and the workshops there have the wool supply and the bench time to finish a 12 by 15 properly. The weave itself is even from selvage to selvage, the wool has a low natural sheen rather than a chemical wash shine, and the back photograph shows a consistent knot line with no pulling or waviness in the foundation. If you are weighing this against older workshop pieces, our guide to the difference between a Persian and an Oriental rug explains where each sits, and why a new hand-knotted piece of this size is the practical choice for a room that gets daily use.