Rugs Guide

In the last two or three years, petro-dollars have had an unquestioned impact on the prices of Oriental carpets, and of Persian pieces in particular.The principal buyers are Persians  who have a predeliction for brightly coloured silk pieces in good condition, and it is carpets of this description which have increased the most in value.The Persian and other Middle Eastern buyers have not been the only forces at work in the carpet market.German and American collectors have been particularly active in the field of nineteenth-century village and tribal weaving from Turkey,the Caucasus,nineteenth-century Persia and the Turkoman tribes.

Serious collectors of carpets, like serious collectors of any type of art, are prepared to pay outstanding sums for things they consider to be of exceptional rarity and importance. Their approach is essentially academic, and they are seeking features which may be of little interest to the layman.For instance, a dedicated collector of Turkoman carpets is prepared to pay very highly for an example of 'S-group', because he knows that these pieces are rare and crucially important to a study of Turkoman weavings.

The cultured layman will seek rather to purchase a carpet of aesthetic merit at a price commensurate with his purse.He will also be hoping to use the piece in the normal domestic way - that is , as a floor covering. With this in mind , he will be aware that any carpet, no matter how finely made, will eventually show the signs of continual wear ; a carpet placed in the living room of a busy family will suffer. Thus, the purchaser will have to balance the amount of money he pays for a carpet against the use to which he intends to put it. He should remember that many Oriental carpets were not intended to be placed on hard wooden floors and be walked upon by feet clad in hard leather shoes. Any carpet dealer of experience can tell stories of selling old carpets in good condition, only to see them a few years later with the pile worn down to the web. And such stories are told not only of nineteenth century pieces , but of sixteenth - century Safavid carpets also.

It is impractical to use good carpets as floor coverings. In this respect,we emphasize that the majority of such pieces are being used under circumstances which their makers did not envisage and thus they must be treated with great care. A carpet which has a large area of pile worn away is almost irreparable, and re-piling is, even if possible, very expensive. Thus, as a general rule, carpets of real quality and some age (and we hardly need to say that this applies above all to silk pieces) should not be used in areas where they are likely to be subjected to heavy wear.