News & Information

Written by David Castriota
Monday, 31 July 2006
Among the carpet-producing regions of the Middle East none is as varied and extensive in its output, or perhaps as ancient, as Iran. It is possible that fragments of ninth century pile carpets discovered at Fostat near Cairo were imported from Iran. In any case, large-scale carpet weaving is attested in Iran by the Mongol or Ilkhanid period c. 1300, as well as for the subsequent Timurid period up through the late fifteenth century.

But the great era of Persian carpet weaving really begins after 1500 with the foundation of the Safavid dynasty by Shah Ismail. In the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries Iran produced many of the great masterpieces of Oriental carpet weaving that are still extant today. Major enters of production seem to have been Tabriz, Kerman, and Isfahan, although there is no firm historical documentation for attributing carpets to the last site.

During this period Persian carpets were exported all over the world, from Japan to Western Europe. It is perhaps significant that the lavish carpets captured as booty from the Ottoman Turks after the Battle of Vienna in 1683 consisted primarily of Persian pieces, even though the Turks were themselves major producers of pile carpets. Persian carpets reached their maximum production in the later nineteenth century by which time they had become virtually synonymous with the concept of the Oriental rug.

During this time a great revival, Iranian weavers recaptured much of the range and quality of the classical Persian predecessors, both at old centers like Tabriz and Kerman, as well as in many new areas of Production like Sultanabad or Kashan. Since that time Persian carpets have been made in an almost dizzying array of styles from the finest urban productions to the boldest village and nomadic pieces.

Popularity: 7% [?]

Written by David Castriota
Tuesday, 25 July 2006

The Oriental carpet has always been synonymous with exotic luxury, elegant design, and a comfortable, highly aestheticized environment. From the earliest times, humans have needed to embellish and ornament the circumstances in which they lived, and the medium of woven carpets soon emerged to meet such requirements. Carpet production is attested from ancient times. Flatwoven floor coverings are probably as old as textiles and architecture. The oldest knotted pile carpets can be attested by the sixth century B.C., but their production may well be considerably older. Some experts believe that pile carpets originated among tent-dwelling nomadic peoples to the east of Central Asia as a more decorative substitute for animal hides, providing comfort and insulation as well as decoration. Carpet making reached the Near East through contact with such nomadic peoples. Since relations between Central Asian nomads and the Near East were more or less constant, the production of pile carpets in the latter region was probably stimulated and influenced by nomadic traditions again and again.

This process first becomes clear in the medieval period, between the eleventh and the fourteenth centuries, when various Central and East Asian peoples like the Turks and Mongols came to power across the eastern Islamic world, bringing with them traditions of carpet making that were by now many centuries old. The earliest Near Eastern carpets of this kind are those of Seljuk Turkey and those made in Iran under the Mongol and Timurid dynasties. Carpets of this kind now began to have highly complex designs influenced by contemporary textiles, especially silks.

From this period on, the knotted pile carpet became an increasingly standard feature of Islamic art and high culture, and soon it captured the attention of wealthy Europeans as well. Already by the thirteenth century merchant travelers like Marco Polo remarked on the beauty of the Oriental carpets they encountered on their journeys, and soon such carpets began to be imported into Venice and thence to the rest of Europe. While actual early carpets of this kind are rarely preserved, European painting by the great masters from Giotto and Ghirlandaio to Holbeim, van Eyck, Lotto, and Vermeer constantly depict carpets from Turkey and Iran. Such paintings document the importance that the Oriental carpet had attained by this time as a quintessential symbol of cosmopolitan taste and affluence. So valued were these carpets that there were various attempts to imitate or adapt them in Europe.

After the seventeenth century Europeans briefly lost interest in the Oriental carpet. This probably reflected developments in the Near and Middle East, where all the great ruling dynasties collapsed or went into regression, bringing about a corresponding roll-back in the quantity and quality of carpet production. During this hiatus European carpet production was stepped up, creating the Aubusson and Savonnerie types in a Neo-Classical western style. Carpet production in Spain, which had begun under Muslim rule in the Middle Ages, also moved in to meet the European demand for rugs.

In the second half of the nineteenth century, rug weaving in Iran went into a great period of revival under the highly retrospective Qajar dynasty, re-awakening the European interest for Oriental carpets and creating a new American market for them as well. This eventually led to a revival or expansion of carpet production in Turkey and also a revival of Indian carpet weaving under British rule. At this time Chinese carpets, whose production went back to ancient times, finally became known in quantity to European and American markets.

From that time on the western world became used to an endless variety of Oriental rugs and carpets whose production continues into the present time. The most notable recent developments are the revival of vegetable dyes and hand-spinning of wool, which had largely died away in the course of the twentieth century. Such new productions capture much of the quality and original flavor of antique Oriental rugs. But only a genuine antique can preserve the soul and spirit of Oriental rug weaving, an art form that reaches back virtually unbroken to the earliest times. Antique Oriental rugs are not only objects of great beauty and rarity; they are a much-needed bridge to a bygone world of consummate skill and expressiveness that is vastly different from the mass-culture of modern western experience.

Popularity: 5% [?]

Written by David Castriota
Friday, 07 July 2006
What makes these elegant and well woven little rugs so interesting and
desirable?

Konaghend Kuba carpets represent one of the more interesting and sophisticated types from the Caucasian village rug production of the nineteenth century. Always well woven in a tight technique with first-rate drawing, Konaghends tend to have “Kufic” borders and a field design of allover arabesque tendrils transformed into a highly geometric repeating network. The tendrils generally form or approximate small medallions that recur across the field in superimposed horizontal rows. No. 2738 from Nazmiyal, shows an excellent example of this type. The main border follows a long tradition that adapted the stylized geometric Kufic script of the early Islamic period to carpet designs.

At first glance, another Konaghend, no. 2613 from Nazmiyal, simply appears to be a more stylized or simplified version of the standard design of this type. Here the oblong shield-like medallions in the field seem to take precedence as an allover tessellated design, while the tendrils have been reduced to small curling bits in the intervening spaces. But a closer look reveals that this example reflects the impact of another design tradition. It goes back to the allover tessellated medallion designs of Timurid rugs from the fourteenth to fifteenth centuries, which have rarely been preserved, in the original; they are known mostly from representations in Islamic manuscript painting. This unique and outstanding carpet clearly reflects such Timurid precedent, although it is unclear how and when such tradition reached the Caucasus. It provides a rare glimpse into the factors or influences behind Caucasian village rug design, whose history before the nineteenth century is very obscure.

Popularity: 4% [?]

A 20/20 Perspective on a Unique Carpet Dealer

Middle Eastern literature is replete with stories of magic carpets that fly into fantasy and take their passengers to exotic worlds. In truth, that is exactly what an original Persian carpet does, for although you may not think that it flies, the beauty of these rugs is that they were made to be a floor tapestry woven to transport the owner into a world of gardens, flowers, cedars and flowing paradise waters. An escape from a barren world of hot sun and sand was and is created in a thicket of woven wool, cotton, silk and sometimes gold and silver thread. There is not much difference between the concrete jungle of our cities and the antiquity of Tach Jam Sheet (Persepolis). The carpet can make everyone a Shah, an Emir, a Pasha or a King, and regardless of room size, it can make every space a miniature exotic palace.

I’ve been a designer and collector of carpets for 35 years. In the decades of turning pages, visiting exotic lands and surfing the Internet, the task has been to find the dealer with the best eye. Few of us can trundle to auctions, bargain in Farsi and Turkish, jet set our way into strange and difficult climes, and pay obeisance to governments that especially today do not find Americans as lovable as we might hope. The result is our need to find an agent, an ambassador, a consultant, and a friend that can and will act as an emissary to cut the Gordian Knot. Such an agent may find a selection of artworks that in a modern world can fly us to places we fear to visit , or take us to streets and bazaars too difficult to navigate , which are delineated with alphabets as strange as hieroglyphics.

In that the world has unraveled itself into a pre-Columbus map drawn by our modern-day Amerigo Vespucci - Tom Freedman - carpet prices are as consistent whether one withdraws a ruble, dollar, franc or drachma from one’s wallet. Prices in the Central Bazaar in Istanbul, the Island of Kish, Iran or at the Textile Expo in Germany have all become “Ebayed”.

I have lifted many a carpet over with my toe to see a weave, pondered many a volume of curious lore about Middle Eastern floor and wall art, negotiated with at least 100 dealers, sorted by “highest price” on Internet search engines, and googled my way to 300 web sites with keywords like “Antique, Rug, Persian, Oriental, Serapi, Heriz, Agra, Sultanabad” etc., until I found the land beyond the Sambatyan – the land of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel, the Mother load of classy, rich, well-designed, antique, genteel and attractive carpets. But, it was not in Tehran, nor by the Bospherous, nor in the mountains of the Caucasus, but with Nazmiyal in New York and New Jersey. It’s co-owner, Jason responded to my fractured Farsi Chey Chabar with Salam a Tee, and we were soon putting in search fields and closing deals from my office and his showroom.

Jason did not request that I take time and write a letter of recommendation. He did not guide my computer keys in which I have waxed prolific in compliments it came as a result of my appreciation for his having saved me the air fare, hours and days of flipping heavy carpets taxing the men who with full brows of perspiration make me feel guilty regardless of venue. I write this out of sincere admiration for Jason’s ability to assemble a collection of the finest designs , whose prices reflect their value. Jason is a testament to that for which I have searched for 40 years, a person who shares my eye chart in the quality of woven art for which I have taken these many years of pleasure.

by Wilbur Pierce

Popularity: 6% [?]