So how does a young lad attending college in the cornfields of Iowa get involved with Oriental rugs? The episode which first stirred my latent rug propensity occurred in a dimly lit and dusty import store in Iowa City amid too many black- lacquered Chinese chests. Two merchants took trips to the Himalayas and brought back various artifacts including rugs from Kashmir. I remember distinctly - that I remember at all is incredible since we had just ingested some of the more comestible "artifacts" from the Himalayas - an open field, navy-grounded medallion design rug about 3x5 feet. Now a week before this encounter I had read the section about Oriental rugs in Ouspensky's In Search of the Miraculous, later quoted in Jim Opie's book. So I was primed, as it were, to be totally taken in by this rug.
Keep in mind this is a brand new Kashmir copy of a quasi-Kerman design, i.e. floor covering in rug collectors' Hell. And yet I was passionately wonderstruck by the thing. The knowledge that awe can be provided by what, to the aesthete, is junk is a lesson I've kept under my rug dealer's hat ever since. Awe is the desired effect; the rug, whether it's a '30s Deco Chinese, a '70s Baluch, or an early 19th century Konya, is simply the catalyst. Naturally, if you spend (my wife would suggest waste) a lot of time looking at rugs, you may not want these things; but (and I hesitate to throw this dart, but I'm on a roll) seasoned rug dealers and collectors as a group are not so oppressive as to encourage normal people to adopt their lifestyles or their views of rugs.
Back to Iowa City. After seeing this Kashmir Kerman and being essentially a bookworm, I was fortunate to find that the library at the University of Iowa had a nice collection of rug literature: Eiland's book, the crusty Hawley and Mumford, Raphaelian's Hidden Meaning... (which went well with my Ouspenskyesque bent), Dimand/Mailey's Rugs at the Met, Schurmann's Oriental Carpets, O'Bannon's The Turkoman Carpet. There must have been 10 or 15 titles, which I borrowed on a rotating basis, four or five at a time. I supplemented my reading with buying rugs at auctions and flea markets. As everyone knows, there is no substitute for handling the goods.
At this point, I opted for a number of "career" changes. From Pharmaceutical Transportation, Ranch Hand, and Black American Cultural Ambassador (jazz saxophonist), I wound up, finally and inexplicably, in Banking. I, of course, habitually continued to dabble in rugs. In fact, I had dabbled to the point of wanting to unload some of my lesser pieces (a desire which seems destined to be my lifelong companion). So I placed an ad in the paper and a guy shows up who doesn't want to buy the rugs I want to sell (typical dealer) but wants to hang another rug I had in a rug exhibit. I was flattered, said OK, and soon this guy was showing me rugs at his house and lending me books of which he had a large collection. I learned a lot from this man, though not always about rugs. For example (and this is the otherwise innocuous episode that compelled me to become a dealer), I bought a 9x12, 1920s Kerman in perfect condition which I perhaps unfairly overbargained for down to $150 and perhaps overstated the faults of the rug. Of course, this is precisely the kind of story most rug dealers and collectors love to tell between themselves as they ritually pat each other on the back. This fellow with all the rug books, though, was unimpressed; he didn't chuckle at my story or try to tell me a better one. He just listened, allowed some cleverly placed silence to deepen my feelings of guilt for stealing this rug, and then started talking about gladiolas or something (I didn't hear as I was busy being introspective). Soon after this, I began my career as a "legitimate" Oriental rug dealer.
In conclusion I should say that the term "collector" as used in this story refers to the so-called "white-knuckle" and "postage stamp" varieties. My own definition has, by necessity, grown to include a client of mine who collects multi-cultural horse paraphernalia (new or old), a couple who own and buy 3x5 and smaller Fette or Nichols Chinese pictorial mats, a doctor who collects village rugs from the 1920s to the 1950s in immaculate condition, a guy who buys dragon representations in any textile medium, and a fellow who has a bizarre group of goat and yak hair rugs (which he adores) from Mongolia. I'm wondering: How typical are these kinds of collectors and should they be represented along with the "white knuckle" type (who in my experience is a fringe element) in the literature? Please send comments and pertinent scientific surveys to Oriental Rug Review.
Ed Note: The dealer who spoke of gladiolas was once the revered editor of ORR in its print incarnation.
