Antique Ziegler Rugs
Room-size hand-knotted Persian carpets from the Sultanabad district of west Persia, woven in the later 19th century with open, softly coloured designs meant for large Western rooms.
Antique Ziegler Rugs
Despite the heading, what dominates is the carpet rather than the rug. Of 86 listings, 71 titles call the piece a carpet, and the recorded sizes are room-size: commonly 3-4m by 4-5m, and running to 6m and beyond. Pieces of true rug scale, around 1.2m to 2m on the long side, are the exception.
The dominant listing is an "Antique Ziegler carpet" with a metric size appended and a date in the 1890s. Roughly half the sampled titles say no more than that. Dealers date these tightly for rugs: 78 of the 86 carry a clean year, 56 of them in the 1890s and 15 in the 1880s, with the field running 1870 to 1930 and only one piece as late as the 1930s.
The name is used alone and in compounds. Mahal appears in 15 titles, usually as "Ziegler Mahal" or "Ziegler-Mahal"; Sultanabad appears in 9, sometimes with the Ziegler word dropped altogether. Fereghan Ziegler turns up twice. A recurring title pattern leads with centimetres and follows with the trade name.
These were woven in and around Sultanabad in the later 19th century, in large sizes with open all-over patterns and soft colour, made for Western drawing rooms and country houses. Round dates like 1890 and 1880 should be read as dealer estimates: some titles hedge with "late 19th Century" or "circa 1870/80", and five fall back on "19th Century" alone.
Where The Range Sits
Size does most of the work. The small rugs sit at the bottom of the sampled range, the smallest at 1.50m x 1.15m, while 430 x 715cm, 623 x 398cm and a 5.65m x 3.90m carpet sit at or near the top. Oversize is what dealers reach for words like country house and palace size to describe.
Colour matters when it reaches the title. Ivory and pale grounds sit high, and colour is named only occasionally, in specific terms: powder blue, rose coral, ivory, pale. The word rare recurs almost entirely in the upper half of the range, and the ivory-ground carpets are where it lands most often.
Attribution and design separate the rest. Unqualified "Antique Ziegler carpet" and the two Fereghan Ziegler pieces occupy the upper half, while Mahal-labelled examples cluster in the middle. Titles that describe the design, including one citing a 17th-century Polonaise pattern, sit at the top; size-only titles spread lower.
Antique Ziegler Rugs Retail Price Guide 2026
Typical UK retail prices for ziegler rugs, calculated from the Sellingantiques database of over a million retail prices indexed since 2003. This retail price guide relies exclusively on Sellingantiques data; no external sources or auction records are used, so the figures do not describe the wider market.
The 1890s is the period given most often on Sellingantiques for Ziegler rugs, with the 1880s next.
The Antique Ziegler Rugs Glossary
- Carpet vs rug
- Here purely a size distinction: carpet for room-size and up, rug for pieces under about 2m. The split explains why the great majority of titles say carpet.
- Sultanabad
- The west Persian weaving region behind these carpets, named in 9 titles and sometimes used in place of the Ziegler name.
- Mahal
- A district and quality name appearing in 15 titles, most often as "Ziegler Mahal" or "Ziegler-Mahal", occasionally as plain "Antique Mahal carpet".
- Ground
- The field colour behind the pattern. Powder blue, rose coral and ivory are the shades named in titles, along with the plain word pale.
- Allover design
- Pattern repeating across the field with no central medallion. One title instead specifies a small medallion, a centred motif.
- Fereghan
- A further west Persian district name, used twice in combination as "Fereghan Ziegler" and the rarest compound in the archive.
- Border runner
- A long narrow format. One appears across the whole archive; every other piece recorded is a rectangular rug or carpet.
Antique Ziegler Rugs: Frequently Asked Questions
Are these rugs or carpets?
Mostly carpets. Carpet appears in 71 of 86 titles, and the sizes back it up: room-size pieces of 3-4m by 4-5m are the norm, with some running past 6m.
Small pieces of rug scale do appear, around 1.2m to 2m on the long side, but they are a minority. The smallest sampled measures 1.50m x 1.15m.
What date are most of these?
The last quarter of the 19th century. Of the 86 listings, 56 are dated to the 1890s and 15 to the 1880s.
The full field runs 1870 to 1930, but only four listings are given as 1900s and one as 1930s. Five use the label "19th Century" without a year.
Why do some listings say Sultanabad or Mahal instead?
Because both are district names for the same west Persian weaving area. Mahal appears in 15 titles, Sultanabad in 9, and some of the Sultanabad listings drop the Ziegler word entirely.
Compound forms are common too: Ziegler Mahal, Ziegler-Mahal, and Fereghan Ziegler on two listings.
How many come up for sale each year?
About twelve a year on Sellingantiques, carried by seven dealers in all.
That makes the category a steady trickle rather than a crowded one, and roughly half the titles are no more than "Antique Ziegler carpet" with dimensions attached.
Is there a maker's name on these?
No. The Ziegler name here is a trade name for later 19th-century Sultanabad-district carpets, not a signature or mark on the piece.
A scan of the archive returned no named weaver or workshop at all, so the name works as an attribution of type and period.
What colours turn up in the descriptions?
Colour reaches the title only occasionally, and when it does the words are specific: powder blue, rose coral, ivory, pale.
Ivory and pale grounds sit toward the top of the range. The rest of the category is described by size and date rather than by colour.