Antique Persian Farahan 16X26 Red Area Rug

Description

Among the most coveted of all antique Persian carpets, Farahan rugs from north-central Iran occupy a singular position in the canon of world textile art. Produced in the 19th century by weavers working in the village workshops of the Farahan plain — a region now largely lost to commercial agricultural use — these rugs are prized above all for two qualities: the extraordinary fineness of their knotting, which allows design detail of almost miniaturist precision at large scale, and the incomparable quality of the local wool, whose unusually high lanolin content gives Farahan pile a silklike luster impossible to replicate through modern processing. This monumental 16 by 26 foot palace-sized example — a format of almost unprecedented ambition — is anchored by a deep, jewel-toned red ground, the product of fine madder dyeing and many decades of natural aging, upon which a dense Herati lattice of palmettes and lancet leaves unfolds in ivory, forest green, and midnight blue.

At this scale, Farahan rugs of this caliber are museum rarities. The world’s great auction houses — Christie’s, Sotheby’s, Skinner — handle perhaps one or two comparable examples per decade, and invariably at prices that reflect the extreme scarcity of palace-sized Farahan production. To encounter such a piece available for acquisition rather than behind glass in a museum gallery is an opportunity that serious collectors recognize immediately. Offered by Ashly Fine Rugs with our full written certificate of authenticity.

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