Manhattan - Rugs and Carpets

1920s Pictorial Chinese Peking Carpet ( 4' 6''x 9' 1'' - 137 x 276 )

Early 20th Century N. Chinese Baotou Carpet

A vintage Persian Tabriz accent rug handmade during the Mid-20th Century. Measures: 4' 6" x 6' 7"

A vintage Turkish Anatolian throw rug handmade during the mid-20th century. Measures: 3' 6" x 4' 11" Turkish Rugs & Carpets: Until the Great Persian Carpet Revival in the later 19th century, the “Oriental rug” was Turkish. For nearly six centuries, Turkish rugs, both scatter, room size, and even larger, thoroughly dominated the European import market. Whereas the Persian carpet can be divided into urban, village, and tribal types, in Turkey and its predecessor the Ottoman Empire, rugs almost exclusively came from village weavers and from a small number of urban workshops. Ninety percent village, nine percent city, one percent tribal. Turkish weavers have, with very few exceptions, always worked with the symmetric (Turkish) knot. Wool foundations are standard practice among both town and village weavers. The exceptions, very finely woven 20th century and recent Herekeh silks from near Istanbul, and early 17th century Ottoman Court rugs from Bursa, constitute only a tiny part of the total. Always pricey, they appealed and still appeal to the clients who want lots of knots and perfect execution instead of individual personality. The urban workshops have been centered around the western Turkish city of Oushak and its attendant port town of Smyrna. Oushak weaves with the trends in fashion. When color saturated medallion carpets were needed, Oushak was ready in the 17th and 18th centuries. When coarse red and blue carpets were required, Oushak and Smyrna in the 19th century wove them by the boatload. When tastes changed again, and the European dealers in Smyrna wanted room size carpets with lighter and unusual colors, and with Persianate designs, production ramped up in nearby Oushak. Those antique, all-wool construction turn-of-the-century carpets are still in high demand with designers. Antique carpets with allover, roughly drawn patterns on grounds of shrimp, rust, straw, cream, pale blue, and pale and pea green, hitherto unavailable colors, are in such demand today that contemporary Oushaks have attempted to mimic them with soft palettes, extra-large scale drawing and coarse weaves. Oushaks woven for the Turkish market, for palaces, houses and mosques were often oversize with large, repeating medallions, all in shades of (Turkey) red, dark blue, light blue-teal, and ivory, with lemon and green accents. Turkey, along with India, invented standard sizes. By vertically repeating the medallion, one could get one medallion, one with two end halves, two, three, etc. medallions, up to thirty or so feet in length. The process spared making new cartoons for each length and allowed a quicker turnaround time. Oushak, from the time of 15th century “Holbein” rugs onward, has always been a commercial center. The prayer niche directional rug is primarily a Turkish development. In the towns and villages east of Oushak, in Ghiordes, Kula, Ladik, Kirsehir, Mucur and Konya, among others, arch pattern scatters with bright palettes and weaves varying from relatively fine to moderate were almost the entire production. Antique examples were particularly popular in America around 1900. Other centers of village weaving were situated on the western coast and adjacent islands with the town of Melas and neighboring villages weaving geometric prayer rugs and scatters with a characteristic khaki green and lots of yellow. The other large region was in the northwest of Anatolia, near ancient Troy, with the sizable town of Bergama at its center. The satellite towns of Ezine, Karakecilli, Yuntdag, and Canakkale all wove colorful scatters with moderate weaves in all wool with geometric designs and cheerful palettes. Near to Istanbul, these were among the first Turkish rugs to reach Europe in the Renaissance. The earliest Turkish pieces depicted in Italian Old Master paintings display the so-called “Memling gul”, an allover panel pattern with hooked and stepped elements within the reserves. This pattern continues for centuries in the Konya area and in the Caucasus as well. Turkey is a land of villages and much of the most interesting Turkish weaving comes from one undiscovered village or another. The Konya-Cappadocia region of central Turkey includes the active towns of Karapinar, Karaman, Obruk, Sizma, and Tashpinar, all weaving Konya-esque scatters and long rugs. Karapinar has been active the longest, since the 17th century. The mosques in and around Konya have preserved locally-made rugs from the fourteenth. In the 20th century, the extra-long pile, many wefted Tulu rug was devised, with limited palettes and color block patterns. These are not really antique Tulus, but they must be a product of long-standing village tradition. There are thousands upon thousands of rural Turkish villages, almost all with easy access to local tribal wool. Rug students are discovering new names and rug types almost daily. The common denominators are bright colors, geometric designs, wool construction, moderate to coarse weaves and symmetric knots. Synthetic dyes hit the Turkish rug industry quickly and hard after 1870, and they penetrated to even the most off-the-beaten-track villages. This development was almost entirely negative. The village weavers used fugitive or overly bright dyes which ruined the color harmonies built up over centuries. Characteristic types disappeared or were negatively transmuted. The Turkish village rug of the 1870 to 1920 period is nothing to be proud of. In the eastern provinces, the semi-nomadic Kurdish tribes, collectively called ‘Yuruks’, weave all wool, geometric pieces with medium to medium-coarse weaves, as well as kilims and other flatweaves. The rugs employ cochineal instead of madder for the reds, mustard yellows, greens, and various blues. They are under-collected like the Persian Afshars. Their rugs are in scatter and long rug formats. The far eastern Turkish town of Erzerum has a long tradition of idiosyncratic, semi-workshop rugs and further to the east is Kars with a tradition of rugs in the Caucasian Kazak manner. One Turkish specialty is the Yastiks or cushion cover, made in pairs for the public living rooms of village houses. These are larger rugs in miniature and good ones are highly collectible. Like other Turkish rustic weavings, ones with synthetic dyes are almost totally undesirable. Only the tribal Baluch make similar cushion covers, known as pushtis or balishts, in the same small, oblong format. Yastiks always have a back, usually in plain weave, so that they can be easily stuffed. When the Imperial Carpet Factory at Herekeh near Istanbul closed in the early 20th century, the highly proficient Armenian master weavers set up in the Kum Kapi district of Istanbul where they wove all-silk, exquisitely fine and elaborately detailed small pieces, sometimes enriched with metal thread, for the most discriminating European buyers. Today the best, signed Kum Kapi pieces, usually in the “Sultan’s head” prayer niche design, can fetch upwards of $100,000. They are strictly for the wall. An Interwar all-silk room size Kum Kapi carpet is both exceedingly rare and stratospherically priced. The workshops closed in the 1930s, but the weaving of extremely fine, all-silk small rugs in Herekeh was revived in the 1960s. There has been a recent vogue for larger Turkish village vintage...

A verdure with dominant tree in full summer leaf to the right, with earth-tone palette. A thatched and half-timbered water mill recedes into the atmospheric middle distance, with ad...

Square size Pillow made from a Persian Lilihan rug. zipper closure and poly-fill insert provided. Measures: 19'' x 19''.

An antique Persian, Malayer, pictorial carpet from the turn of the 20th century.

Vintage Turkish Flat-Weave Hemp Rug 6'1 x 10'3. A vintage handwoven flat-weave hemp Kilim the weave is a simple tabby or plain weave. There are no borders. The texture is robustly co...

Early 20th Century Indian Cotton Dhurrie Carpet ( 9'6" x 26' - 290 x 793 )

This Tiger rug embodies a traditional and versatile pattern, both contemporary and timelessly classic. Shown in gold and indigo, colored with vegetable dyes. Joseph Carini was inspir...

Antique Chinese - Mongolian rug, size: 17'0" x 17'2".

A vintage Persian Gabbeh modernist carpet from the mid-20th century. A vintage Persian Gabbeh rug. The khaki field of this small square tribal scatter is closely covered by a nested ...

Pillow made from antique Persian Mahal rug with cotton back. Measures: 17'' x 22''.

Timeless Elegance for Modern Interiors Steeped in history and refined for contemporary spaces, Ziegler Sultanabad rugs seamlessly blend Persian heritage with Western design sensibili...

An antique Persian Gabbeh throw rug handmade during the early 20th century with tribal design elements scattered throughout the undyed natural wool colored (cream/light brown) field....

19th Century American Hooked Rug ( 7'6" x 8'9" - 228 x 266 )

A modern Turkish flat-weave Kilim large room size carpet handmade during the 21st century with a colorful geometric pattern resembling interconnected serrated edged vases in an abstr...

A vintage Persian Mahal rug from the mid-20th century.

Mid 20th Century Moroccan Carpet ( 12' x 15' - 366 x 457 )

A vintage Persian Veece small room size carpet handmade during the mid-20th century. Measures: 6' 10" x 10' 2".

1920s Chinese Art Deco Rug ( 5' x 6'9" - 152 x 205 )

Early 20th Century N. Chinese Mongolian Carpet ( 16'10'' x 17'10'' - 513 x 544 )

Beautiful and extremely artistic vintage Scandinavian EGE Art Line Robert Jacobsen rug, country of origin / rug type: Scandinavia, date circa mid-20th...

A vintage Chinese Art Deco throw rug handmade during the mid-20th century. Measures: 2' 8" x 3' 9" The Craft of the hand-knotted carpet in China, and the surrounding areas including Mongolia and Tibet, extends into the early centuries of the first millennium, C.E., but we really have a firm grasp only beginning in the later 16th century with large, very coarsely woven carpets, often depicting dragons, created for the Imperial Forbidden City palaces. Chinese carpets have always been commercial and there are no tribal groups responsible for any of the carpet weaving strains. When the Ming Dynasty fell in 1644, with no Imperial patrons, production moved to the city of Ningxia in north central China where several workshops turned out more finely woven pieces for the Mandarins of the administrative Ch’ing bureaucracy and well-to-do merchants. Ningxia was the major Chinese carpet center up through most of the 19th century, with first allover and then medallion designs on cotton foundations in medium weaves. Palettes were initially limited to yellows, dark blue and cream, but later widened to include reds, browns and even green. These antiques were the first Chinese carpets to be exported to the West and they fitted in well with the craze for Chinese blue-and-white porcelain in the second half of the 19th century. Ningxia also wove shaped and rectangular small rugs for saddle underlays, chair (“throne”) seats and shaped backs, pillar carpets with dragons or monks for Buddhist monasteries, and long divided runners for monastery meditation halls. These small rugs are among the most collectible of all Chinese weavings. Weavers from Ningxia set up workshops in the capital Peking (Beijing) in the 1860’s and began weaving Western room sizes for export, primarily to America. In blue – and – white and polychrome palettes, with round wreath medallions, precious objects, seasonal flowers, paeonies, lotuses, fretwork, clouds, butterflies and bats, all relatively spaciously drawn. The round “Shou” (Good Luck) character is also a prominent decorative motif. There are also a few Peking landscape pictorials with pagodas, houses, bridges, waterscapes and boats. Peking carpets were woven right up until WWII and production began again after the Cultural Revolution around 1970. They are moderately well-woven, on cotton foundations, exactingly executed and indisputably Chinese. Many are in the blue-and-white style. Nothing else looks like a Peking carpet and for a Chinese “look” in a room, they are absolutely indispensable. Sizes range from scatters and a few runners, through the popular 9’12’ size, to large carpets over 20’ which must have been special orders. The earliest Peking Revival carpets are pliable and fairly thin, but they became heavier and more compact in the 20th century, in competition with Art Deco carpets from Tientsin. The modern, post- 1970, pieces are in the traditional Peking style, but are a little too regular and neat. Exactitude has been favored over character, as hard to explain that as it is. There are a number of all-silk and silk-and –metal thread pieces, many with inscriptions purporting to link them with rooms in the Imperial palaces, bringing very substantial auction prices, but none are really antique. The genre emerged after WWI and the present demand comes from mainland Chinese. The silk piles often Stand in pattern relief against flat woven gold metal thread grounds. The inscriptions are apocryphal, the rugs are flashily opulent, perfect for nouveaux riches. The Art Deco period between the two World Wars saw a distinctive carpet industry developing in Tientsin (Tianjin) in northeastern China. These are highly prized for their transitional design character, neither overtly Chinese, nor abstractly modern/contemporary. Woven exclusively for export, usually by and for American firms, such as Nichols and Elbrook, they are totally in the “Jazz Age Modern” style of the 1920’s, often without borders, with abstract or abstracted patterns, and only with, at best, a few Chinese-y pattern elements. Vases asymmetrically placed in the corners are features of some of the more Chinese-y carpets. Open fields with floral sprays and branches growing in from the edges are anther design innovation. Often, Chinese motives have been re-imagined in more sharp-edged, abstract manners. Some have no references whatsoever to natural elements. The patterns are sharp and the rugs are never subdued, soft or restrained. The rugs are heavily constructed, with crisp, unfading dyes and medium to medium coarse weaves on cotton foundations. All are extremely well-executed, with none of the vagaries, variations or twists found on even high-quality Persian rugs. The majority are in the 9’ by 12’ format and a surprising number can be found in top condition. There also was a substantial production in Peking from, especially from the Fette factory. Elliptical and round carpets, and lighter, often pastel colors, were a specialty. Nothing looks like an Art Deco Chinese and they work well with traditional Chinese furniture and the most modern decor as well. These is no substitute for a good Chinese Art Deco carpet. Chinese carpets also include small scatters from Tibet, with high quality wool, floating dragons and allover textile patterns. The colors of vintage and modern pieces are bright, but there are antique small rugs...

A vintage Persian flat-weave tribal Kilim room size accent rug handmade during the mid-20th century with a zebra print design in ivory and black with red bindings. Measures: 6' 5"...

Antique Art Deco, European rugs 8' 10" x 13' 3".

A vintage Turkish Anatolian long tribal room size carpet handmade during the Mid-20th century. Measures: 9' 2" x 16' 2".

A vintage Chinese Art Deco accent rug, in an oblong oval shape, handmade during the mid-20th century with a floral pattern over a magenta-red field and goldenrod yellow border. Me...

Our African rug is handknotted from the finest hand-carded, hand spun, naturally dyed wool. With beige neutral tones, this runner offers quality and consistency. Custom sizes and col...

A vintage Persian Mashad room size carpet handmade during the mid-20th century with a Minimalist, yet geometric Art Deco inspired design. Measures: 9' 1" x 13' 7".

Early 20th Century Donegal Arts & Crafts Carpet " The Donnemara " Designed by C.F.A. Voysey 12'6" x 14'8" - 380 x 445 cm

Antique Chinese - Art Deco rug, size: 8'9" x 11'6".

Early 19th Century French 1st Empire Period Aubusson Carpet 13'8" x 14'4" - 417 x 437

Beautiful Antique Animal Motif Tehran Persian Rug, Country of Origin / Rug Type: Persian Rug, Circa Date: 1900 –Size: 4 ft 4 in x 5 ft 9 in (1.32 m x 1.75 m).

1920s Chinese Art Deco Carpet ( 4' x 6'10" - 122 x 208 )

An antique Chinese Art Deco room size carpet handmade during the early 20th century. Measures: 10' 0" x 13' 7"

Beautiful Large Antique Spanish Rug, Country of Origin: Spain, Circa Date: 1920. Size: 11 ft 5 in x 17 ft 10 in (3.47 m x 5.43 m)

Our vintage Moroccan rugs are part of a skillfully curated collection of rare and unusual designs. They are made of all-natural dyes and 100% handspun wool from the Atlas Mountain re...

A vintage Turkish Konya carpet from the mid-20th century.

Mid 19th Century NW Persian Galley Carpet ( 7'8" x 22'10" - 234 x 696 ) Handmade antique NW Persian carpet. Woven circa 1820 (early 19th century). Persian i...

Early 20th Century American Hooked Rug ( 6' x 9' - 183 275 )

Besserabian Tapestry-woven Palace carpet This enormous antique Moldovan carpet is a stuffy in the artistic use of yellow: as a field tone in an all-over...

Late 19th Century Chinese Peking Rug ( 3'6" x 3'6" - 107 x 107 )

Early 20th Century N. Indian Agra Cotton Carpet ( 4' x 6'2" - 122 x 188 )

A vintage Russian Bessarabian flat-weave accent rug handmade during the mid-20th century with a pictorial depiction of 2 tigers in a forest setting. Measures: 6' 7" x 9' 9".

1930s American Navajo "Two Grey Hills" Carpet ( 5' x 7' 8'' - 152 x 233 cm )

A modern Turkish flat-weave Kilim room size rug handmade during the 21st century with a colorful horizontally striped pattern. A statement piece with its bright and whimsical colors....

1920s Chinese Art Deco Carpet ( 8'8" x 11'4" - 264 x 345 )

19th Century Caucasian Kazak Carpet ( 3'10" x 8' - 117 x 244 )

A modern Turkish flatweave Kilim room size carpet handmade during the 21st century with a geometric design in colorful tones perfect for a children's playroom. Measures: 12' 2" x 15' 1" Knotted pile rugs are just one small part of a vast universe of textile techniques suitable for heavy use. If you can imagine it, some weaver has tried it out. Pieces can be roughly divided into those reversible from the start and those never, or at least not initially, reversible. Thus kilims are considered reversible, while everything else is not. Kilims are tapestry woven rugs with both sides the same, in either slit technique where colors change, or with various methods of avoiding slits. Slit tapestry weave goes back to ancient times and Coptic Egyptian...

Highly Artistic And Rare Antique European Silk and Velvet Textile, Origin: Europe, Approx. Circa Date: Nineteenth Century

An antique Turkish Oushak room size carpet handmade during the early 20th century. Measures: 10' 3" x 12' 10" Turkish Rugs & Carpets: Until the Great Persian Carpet Revival in the later 19th century, the “Oriental rug” was Turkish. For nearly six centuries, Turkish rugs, both scatter, room size, and even larger, thoroughly dominated the European import market. Whereas the Persian carpet can be divided into urban, village, and tribal types, in Turkey and its predecessor the Ottoman Empire, rugs almost exclusively came from village weavers and from a small number of urban workshops. Ninety percent village, nine percent city, one percent tribal. Turkish weavers have, with very few exceptions, always worked with the symmetric (Turkish) knot. Wool foundations are standard practice among both town and village weavers. The exceptions, very finely woven 20th century and recent Herekeh silks from near Istanbul, and early 17th century Ottoman Court rugs from Bursa, constitute only a tiny part of the total. Always pricey, they appealed and still appeal to the clients who want lots of knots and perfect execution instead of individual personality. The urban workshops have been centered around the western Turkish city of Oushak and its attendant port town of Smyrna. Oushak weaves with the trends in fashion. When color saturated medallion carpets were needed, Oushak was ready in the 17th and 18th centuries. When coarse red and blue carpets...

Antique Abusson Rug, Size: 8' 8''x11' 0''

An antique Persian Malayer throw rug handmade during the early 20th century. Measures: 2' 8" x 4' 0".

Antique Sultanabad Persian rug 11'8" x 14'9".

19th Century English Victorian Needlepoint Carpet ( 6' x 6' - 185 x 185 )

A vintage Turkish Sivas deco carpet from the mid-20th century. Measures: 6' 5" x 9' 7".

19th Century Persian Serab Rug ( 3'2'' x 3'9'' - 97 x 114 )