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Buying Oriental Carpet - Today, master craftspeople create works of art ranging from patterns that have been passed down through the centuries to the diverse styles of contemporary designers. Welcome to Best Oriental Carpets, True oriental, Persian, modern, and antique carpet masters. Your luxury carpet needs are our # 1 concern, no questions asked. Rugman's one of a kind, hand knotted rugs are valued heirlooms that add rich culture to your home or office within seconds.

How to Buy an Oriental Carpet (Guide)

Buying Oriental Carpet

[How to Buy a Carpet Guide.pdf]

Carpet making is an ancient tradition. The technique of hand knotting carpet dates back at least three thousand years to when handmade carpet were used in Asian cultures for prayer, to add warmth to the home, for adornment, and even to cushion horse saddles. Today, master craftspeople create works of art ranging from patterns that have been passed down through the centuries to the diverse styles of contemporary designers.

Purchasing a handmade carpet can be daunting, yet those who succeed in buying beautiful Oriental carpet are richly rewarded. So how can you choose well? Where will you find carpet of outstanding quality? And how can you judge the value of Oriental carpet? Here are some guidelines.

  1. The Portrait of an Excellent Oriental Carpet.

    A good-quality Oriental carpet, which can spend upwards of three months on the loom, is one that lies flat and straight on the floor and is reasonably regular in its shape. It has lively, lustrous wool. Its colors have neither faded nor bled. In fact its colors, whether of natural or modern synthetic dyes, are harmonious and in balance. Often there is a pleasant variegation in the colors of an excellent handmade carpet and a feeling that the carpet has personality or character. Luminescent silk might be used to highlight its design. It has been intelligently “finished” so that it is neither washed out, nor unnaturally shiny, nor unpleasantly bright and harsh. The elements of the carpet’s design seem to fit naturally together. Above all, the rug has an X quality, a hook, a spirit that speaks of its having been designed and woven by a skilled adult artisan.

  2. How to Find a Quality Oriental Carpet

    Perhaps the single most important step in buying a good carpet is to find a caret dealer you can trust. Why? First of all, good dealers know very well which carpet are good and they have large selections of them. The best oriental carpet dealers are born educators who love to share their knowledge with you. They guide you without bullying, teach you without being dogmatic. They are very concerned about child labor in the carpet industry and carefully avoid carpet made under suspect conditions.

    Look for well-established dealers. Forget the stores that have endless “going out of business” sales. Research a store’s reputation. Surf the web for clues. Some of the finest, most ethical dealers in the country can be located by zip code through RugMark’s website at www.rugmark.org. Ask friends where they bought their Oriental carpets. And finally, trust yourself. If you feel uncomfortable with a dealer, move on.

  3. Do Some Research

    Rugmaker
    • First, measure the area the rug will cover. Remember, you should probably have a border of flooring all the way around the carpet. Allow for a range of sizes: for instance, between 8 and 9 feet wide by 11 to 12 feet in length. The greater the range, the more choices you will have.
    • If possible, gather samples of drapery and upholstery fabrics and bring them with you to the showroom.
    • Consider whether you prefer traditional Oriental carpet or those with contemporary designs. Traditional designs draw on thousands of years of carpet history and are always fashionable. Contemporary designs spring from the inspiration of artists with a sophisticated understanding of today’s fashions.

  4. Buy Rugs Made By Adult Artisans

    • As you focus on buying a rug made by adults and not by children, remember that the rugs most likely to have been made from illegal child labor are the cheapest Indian, Pakistani and Nepalese carpet
    • The rugs least likely to have been made with child labor are those that are of exceptional quality. Almost by definition, quality carpets have been woven by experienced, adult craftsmen, another compelling reason to buy a carpet of excellent quality.

  5. Trust, but Verify

    Rugmaker

    Good carpet dealers will encourage you to take carpet home on approval without obligation. To best take advantage of this buying tool, arm yourself with some basic information.

    • Good carpets lie flat on their backs, without ripples along their edges. Carpet with wrinkles, curled edges, etc., disturb the eye and cause premature wear. Still, don’t seek perfection. Some irregularity is part and parcel of “hand made.”
    • Some carpets are misshapen. They came off the loom wider on one end than the other, or with bowing edges or an hourglass figure. All else being equal, a regular, geometrically-correct shape is preferable to a visibly distorted one.
    • Some folks love carpet that have faded into a low key, innocuous absence of color, but they should not be surprised when their beloved carpet is spurned by others. Good carpet have colors that resist fading in normal light and resist bleeding when exposed to water.
    • Carpet in good condition are prized above those in bad condition. Moth damage, holes, rips, stains and missing edges are tolerable to most people only when carpets are really old.
    • Quality wool makes a difference. Good wool carpets a noticeable glow. It feels fleecy, perhaps a little oily, and soft. It absorbs dye well and takes heavy use. Inferior wool is full of kemp and hair and is scratchy, dry, lusterless and incapable of properly absorbing dye. Good wool is obviously preferable.

  6. Points to Consider

    Rugmaker

    Besides the considerations above, there are also questions that are more controversial, more subjective or more difficult to answer.

    Are Finely Knotted Rugs Better?

    Rugs are available in myriad densities, with knot counts ranging from 30 knots per inch to over 1,000. Most often, finely knotted or finely woven rugs are most desirable. There are several reasons why. For one, curved lines in a carpets design can be “drawn” more smoothly and gracefully in a carpet with many knots per square inch, just as a lot of pixels in a television screen allow for more natural looking lines. And carpets that are very finely knotted have such dense surfaces that light is attractively reflected from them. But fine knotting alone does not make a carpet good. In fact, a fine weave simply is not appropriate in certain kinds of tribal carpet.

    Natural vs. Synthetic Dyes

    Antique Oriental carpet collectors agree that natural dyes, such as reds from madder redroot or pomegranate peel, browns from walnut shells, or blues from the blue indigo plant, are more desirable than synthetic. Natural dyes add roughly 30% to the cost of a carpet, but they also add to its charm and its value.

    However, the synthetic dyes used today are available in an infinite array of colors and shades and hold their color well over time. It is impossible without expensive laboratory analysis to be certain whether a given dye is natural or synthetic. There is so much to be said on this subject that we cannot tackle it here.

    Hand Spun vs. Machine Spun Wool

    For thousands of years, weavers spun wool by hand to create the yarn that makes up the pile of Oriental rugs. By about WWII, nearly all wool was spun by machines. Now, since about 1985, a small but appreciable number of weavers are again spinning wool by hand. Though some prefer the uniformity of machine spun wool, most collectors and connoisseurs value the effect produced by hand spun wool. When spun by hand, yarn absorbs more dye where it is loosely spun and less dye where it is spun tightly, thus producing pleasant variegation in the colors of a carpet.

    Can You Judge Quality by Height of the Pile?

    Inexperienced rug buyers sometimes mistake a thick pile for quality. In fact, the finest carpet often are the thinnest. Still, if a rug is going to take significant traffic, it should have plenty of body.

    Is the Finishing Process Important?

    At the very end of the production process, carpets are washed in substances that subtly tone down the relatively bright colors of a new carpet. When the finishing process is mismanaged, carpet can be bleached to death and even muddied up with gunk. Look for carpets with a healthy, natural glow.

RugMark thanks Emmett Eiland for writing this guide. Emmett Eiland has operated an Oriental Carpet business in Berkeley, California since 1969. He has staged exhibitions of Oriental Carpets, made films on the art of Oriental carpet repair and on carpet weaving in Afghanistan, traveled extensively in Central Asia, published a book on Oriental Carpet, and written a number of articles for Oriental carpet journals. More in-depth information on these and other issues surrounding the purchase of Oriental Carpets may be found in Eiland’s book Oriental Carpets Today (Berkeley Hills Books, 2003).

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Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Evaluation and Insurance of Persian Carpets By John Thackeray Platinum Quality Author Article Word Coun

An oriental carpet is an expensive investment and like other pieces of art should be insured against theft, loss or damage. There are many things that could happen to your carpet, and having spent a lot of money on it, it would be wise to insure it against loss or damage. There can be only one thing worse than the sadness of losing or damaging your carpet, and that is being out of pocket as a result.

The value of a carpet can be determined by factors such as it age, the size of the carpet, the type of carpet, the colors and dyes that were used (whether synthetic or natural), the condition, the design - although this is probably a more subjective measure.

However, a professional evaluator will be able to judge this with a measure of objectiveness.

Who should evaluate your carpet?

Most antique dealers or general auctioneer would probably not be able to give you a fair evaluation of your oriental carpet since the appraisal of such a carpet should probably be carried out rather by someone with authority in this field such as a reputable carpet dealer or auctioneers who specialize in carpet. The fee for an evaluation could be anything from a fixed cost to a percentage of the value - make sure that you ascertain the fee structure from the evaluator before the job starts else you might be in for a nasty surprise!

The value of the rug is usually estimated at the amount that the carpet would fetch on the open market, less any expenses such as the auctioneer's fee.

Why evaluate the value of the carpet?

This might be necessary in order to ensure that the correct value is passed into the estate when the owner of the carpet dies. The value of the carpet would also be important in the case of divorce settlements or the setting up of family trusts. The carpet would also need to be insured, and for that, the value of the carpet is necessary in order to calculate any insurance fees. Please note that if the carpet is just included in the overall insurance for household items, that if it gets stolen or damaged, you might not be able to claim the full value of the carpet since the value of normal household items are usually capped at a certain amount. You should rather insure your carpet separately as a separate item, for which you will require the evaluation certificate and probably pay a separate insurance premium. Discuss this with your insurance advisor since different insurance companies have different policies.

Valuation certificate and photographic record

It is vital that a photographic record is kept of the oriental carpet together with the evaluation certificate. The oriental carpet should also be described in sufficient detail so that any distinguishing characteristics can be identified afterwards. In case of insuring against fire damage, it is important that a copy of the valuation certificate, the description of the carpet, and the photo be kept at a location other than the one being insured.


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