Sultanabad carpet

This grand Sultanabad carpet from central Persia uses a rendition of linked palmettes drawn in a painterly style against a red ground. This field color is atypical for a Sultanabad piece but works extremely well both with the golds and blues of the over-all ornament as well as with the bold light border. A local nineteenth-century rendition of a classical Persian vine-scroll frames the piece and is drawn with similar tones as the palmettes of the field.