When a Carpet Is More Than a Rug
I read a piece in the New York Times today about a man who travels the world selling high quality
antique oriental rugs. Jan David Winitz was featured in the paper's Frequent Flier column, and he talked about schelping rugs around the globe that he shows to clients. Needless to say these are not your everyday run-of-the-mill carpets, but high quality antiques, hand woven over a hundred years ago or more.
Winitz described a 19th century, 15 x 21 Tabriz masterwork from the workshops of the renowned
Hadji Jallil as having taken 15 weavers upward of a decade to complete. I have this image of heavily draped women (men weave as well) sitting, or squatting, taking threads of cotton or wool, passing them over and under, and over and under, one side to another, creating the cable stitching that becomes the foundation of the rug.
(The fringe you see at the ends of most rugs are the strings of the warp and weft that make up the carpet base.)
After all that looping and tying its time to take the individual threads of naturally dyed fiber and tie each strand into a knot around the sets of warps to create the carpet's intricate patterns. Knot count can vary from 16 to 550 knots per square inch. I'm exhausted just writing about it, let alone doing it.
They are called oriental because of their region of origin. The term refers to carpets handwoven in
an area from the Balkans east to the Pacific Ocean. We're talking Iran (Persia), the Caucasus', Central Asia, Turkey, Afghanistan and China. To be a quality oriental, the carpet should be over 100 years old to insure it was handwoven before the beginning of commercial weaving when workshops began producing rugs for export. There are three categories of rugs: tribal, city and village. Tribal rugs were woven by nomads or tribal people. City rugs were created for aristocratic patrons who commissioned a rug that was designed by a master craftsman and woven by groups of weavers. The village rug is a bridge between these two.
The oldest carpet dates from the 5th century B.C. It was found in the ices of the Pazyryk Valley in
Siberia in 1949. It was woven in an ancient carpet production center in an area that eventually became part of Persia. The largest handwoven rug was recently created in Iran for the Sheik Zayed Mosque in Abu Dhabi. 1,200 weavers created 2.2 billion knots over a 60,000 square foot area in 2 years, to make the rug. Traditional handwoven carpets are still being manufactured around the world today, and in much more manageable sizes. Iran's estimated 1.2 million weavers made enough carpets for the country to export $517 million dollars worth of carpets.
Of course, as you can imagine, the cost of a rug depends on many variables. How old is it? Is it
machine made or handwoven? Is it made of cotton, wool or silk? Are the dyes natural or synthetic? Is it from a recognized workshop? Most of us can afford a nicely machine-made wool carpet. Some of us can afford 200-year-old handwoven silk masterpieces. Perhaps Mr. Winitz will fly a rug out to you or you may visit an oriental carpet shop in your community. I have a personal story to share about one such visit. It took place in Istanbul, during trip to Turkey and Greece, so the experience was enhanced by the romance of the city. It took place on a street that appeared very ordinary and somewhat run-down. Kind of like walking down the retro part of Melrose Avenue in L.A. You entered this shop packed to the rafters with rolled-up rugs and were asked to sit in one of the several comfortable chairs. Small tables were brought out followed by trays with tea. Then out came a rug roll and whoosh, the carpet was dramatically unfurled before you with a flourish and a snap as it settled to the floor.
The rugs were stunning, and the dramatic presentation along with aura of being in Istanbul, made for
one of those unforgettable life adventures. And, whenever we look upon our small 26" x 36" carpet, we're happy to have our own little memorable piece of history.
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