Who's Afraid of Ronnie Newman?

From Vol. 13/5

Newman: Square One... not really. I think it happened rather gradually. In the beginning I didn't know anything about rugs. I have a vague memory of a friend wanting to sell a rug. I thought the rug was beautiful -- it was a Sarouk in ghastly colors. But I think I had an interest prior to that. I had another friend who liked to comb through the antique shops in Montclair (New Jersey); I went with him a few times.

Newman: None whatsoever. I have thought about this, and I cannot bring it down to one event or one influence. I received a Pakistani rug with hideous chrome dyes as a gift. Would you believe that I made people take their shoes off? I couldn't wait to get rid of it, and finally did with a profit... maybe that was the beginning.

I used to buy things and, subsequently, have house sales; I didn't know the good from the bad. Once in a while I would buy a "treasure"... put it away, and, when I would eventually look at it years later, I couldn't wait to sell an aniline dyed monstrosity. I guess that was part of the evolution of my taste: watching absolute treasures turn into god-awful horrors through some mysterious process. I was an obnoxious collector, the kind who ran around saying, "Why should I buy things from dealers when I can go around and find them on my own and buy them for nothing?"

ORR: How do you acquire most of your rugs now?

Newman: Mainly from dealers, some at auction. I virtually never go to house sales. You can still find things with enough fortitude, but you have to decide which is more efficient, doing your own leg work and looking at a lot of rugs, or letting a knowledgeable dealer do the leg work and looking at the few rugs he has found with, perhaps, you in mind. I do remember that arrogant attitude of not wanting to buy from dealers and, of course, now as a dealer, I don't like that.

I think that any serious collector, assuming he has the wherewithal, should go to the dealers. If you try to do it on your own, your collection takes an erratic course; but if you become aligned with a dealer, a specialist dealer, or a few dealers and communicate to them what you want to collect, your collection becomes a real collection. Naturally, I am tooting my own horn here. There is the excitement of the chase, but it is also in the chase that you can make your mistakes.

ORR: One would think that, if a collector has the wherewithal, his time is better spent doing what brings in the wherewithal than playing amateur dealer.

Newman: I believe that. I feel that collectors would probably be better served visiting knowledgeable dealers, ones who specialize in their areas of interest. I probably shouldn't say this: many dealers, irrespective of those who have good taste and a strong guiding aesthetic such as a regard for pre-synthetic material -- why did I say that : "material"? It's a word I loathe. It makes rugs sound like a commodity... Anyway, I fear... I am in the process of biting my tongue -- but a number of people who call themselves rug dealers, and I don't care how long they have been in the business, don't have a clue. They guess!

It doesn't have anything to do with price; what they usually have to offer you wouldn't buy at any price. One should not hesitate to pay a fair, even a fair, high price for something really good. On a piece with integrity a dealer has the right to charge a high price. Price is seldom the problem. They often offer you absolute garbage... and then you see they have no idea what they're doing.

This is difficult to express, but it should be that the people who really know what they're doing get the good rugs. I have a slight resentment for dealers who stumble over something and speculate on it. If they had the knowledge, it wouldn't bother me. They pick the brains of knowledgeable dealers, engage in a sort of semi-intellectual chicanery, and then convert the input gleaned from the willing fool into a price that could choke a herd of horses.

Who am I to say this? I have done it. But I don't like to. That kind of behavior can be justified by the learning process. Well, it's not the only paradox.

This will sound arrogant and elitist -- elitist, yes, let's use that word -- I think that many dealers have no sense of aesthetics; in every realm insensitivity runs rampant, for that matter. Look at the state of the world. How many people are really sensitive to the multitudinous manifestations of individuality and beauty inherent in creatures and objects which are somewhat alien to them. Enough! The really great Oriental rugs and textiles are on a par certainly with the greatest artistic masterpieces in the world. Alas, how does one inculcate the general public with that notion.

ORR: Is this partly due to the fact that rugs are anonymous, the weavers are anonymous and largely women?

Newman: That is all part of it. I remember a very well-known dealer and friend of mine once saying to me that people will pay great amounts of money for furniture, paintings, etc., but a lot of money for something to walk on? Art in the home is generally construed as something that one displays on a wall or places on a table. It's interesting that when we get something, a rug or a textile, that is delicate and fragile, we stabilize it and hang it on the wall, this after it has been walked on for 200 years. That is good, of course, because these things have to be saved. But, the rub is that people, collectors and institutions, will pay $100,000 without blinking for a piece of American furniture, but they wouldn't spend nearly that for a rug or textile that is ten times more important. There is an imbalance here that is historic and still very much with us.

ORR: You have been in the business long enough to have seen it go through changes. Is there a time you look back upon as "the good old days"? Let me ask that another way. If, for whatever reason, you had to get in your car and spend a week in New England looking for things, would it be productive?

Newman: I don't do that anymore but, when I do go looking around, I find things. I do remember when I was on the road I could fill my trunk quite easily. But, there were very few people doing this then. Few Iranians were on the scene at that time. I would go to out-of-the-way auctions, and there would be little competition. An occasional antique dealer would push a price up.

ORR: Years ago we used to spend a lot of time with the late Bill Putnam, (an antique dealer) who essentially built our first collection of American antiques. He had a garage with a loft on Tenney Mountain Road in Plymouth, New Hampshire. I was there one day when he was pulling rugs out of a closet and making a pile on the floor. I asked why. He said that the most outrageous guy in the business was due and that he bought all of Bill's rugs. Bill said "Don't be surprised at anything: he's an actor."

Newman: I remember meeting Bill and Beverly and they were among the few antique dealers who occasionally got really good rugs, or what I thought were good rugs... it was the heyday and I knew nothing. Sometimes, even today, I don't know anything... I think I made an awful mistake a little while ago. But that's part of the game.

(At this point, visitors from Sweden, publishers of the Swedish Oriental rug magazine, Dozar, arrived.)

Pekka Wiena: Salaam, Amigo! It is I, the Ayatollah from Gothenberg.

(Ronnie Newman rose to be introduced and greeted Mr. Wiena and his associate in Swedish. His greeting was returned in Swedish.)

Wiena: You speak Swedish?

Newman: A few words and I can decipher the written word a bit. I specialized in German, academically, and taught it along with English for a while. I have a good sense of how the Germanic languages work.

(After more spirited conversation it was revealed that Mr. Newman had great interest in Finnish, Norwegian, Icelandic, as well as several other languages, and could converse to a greater or lesser degree in them.)

I'll tell you a funny story. In addition to living in New Jersey, I also live in Vermont where I restored a wonderful Greek revival farmhouse. One evening I was having dinner with my accompanist (Ronnie Newman is a singer as well as an actor, linguist, and rug dealer) who is associated with the Manchester music festival, another friend, and a husband and wife -- two brilliant musicians taking part in the festival that summer, visiting from Iceland. I had heard a great deal about them and couldn't wait to meet them because I wanted to hear the way Icelandic sounds (the present day spoken Icelandic, a not too familiar tongue, is much akin to the old Norse spoken in Norway and transplanted when the ancient Norwegians emigrated from their homeland to Iceland). At the table I was engaged in a conversation with Gunnar and had learned a few very simple phrases from him, when I proceeded to interrupt a conversation his wife was having with my accompanist friend. I interrupted in Icelandic! She said, "Oh, my god, where did you learn Icelandic?" "From your husband five minutes ago." She couldn't conceal her amazement. Subsequently, that summer, I ordered conversational books and a grammar of the language.

ORR: Tell us of your feelings concerning animals and people.

Newman: We are a frightening species. People, on the whole, are very divisive. They make any excuse to exclude. I am not speaking of all people -- Galileo, Da Vinci, Botticelli, and sensitive souls that wander the Earth today -- but the vast majority. We have this penchant to exclude. We see this in the question of gays in the military. I am amazed that Colin Powell (Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) can take the stand he does when African-Americans went through the horror of segregation in the military 50 years ago. Some years ago, I acted in a play off-Broadway at the new Federal Theatre which dealt with Truman's integration of the Army. When I was young with long hair and teaching, the hair was a constant point of contention. Swift was right, which end of the egg is up, and who gives a damn?

I used to think that only an attack from another planet would pull all of the Earth's people together. I no longer believe that. I am afraid that if that happened we would have part of the world's population siding with the invaders to achieve some sort of useless domination over others. This is all very frightening. Bosnia! It is horrible!

We talk of war, natural disasters, and pestilence and all the people who are killed. No one ever talks about all of the animals that are killed.

ORR: We have a videotape of the Russian film version of Tolstoy's War & Peace. We were watching it the other night and there is a scene portraying the battle of Borodino. Men fall in perfect lines by the hundreds. When the first horse stumbles, my wife Lyn was so distressed she had to leave the room.

Newman: I would have had to also. I can't even watch nature programs when they show mayhem. Yesterday was my day of the pigeon. I came across an injured pigeon on the highway and took her to the vet's office for treatment. She had a broken leg, a slight chest injury and was in shock. I love animals, maybe even a hair more than people. They are the innocents. We share this planet with them and we continually deprive them and ourselves of a healthy environment.

We are interventionists. Animal research, that sort of thing. I am not a conservationist; conservationists are interested in the species; I am more interested in the individual. I have a friend who stopped supporting Greenpeace for that reason.

ORR: In our conversation a few days ago you made the statement, "Rugs are boring."

Newman: I guess it's the people that can be boring. Rugs are beautiful and mysterious and I love them. But, to be involved with rugs and certainly to deal in them, one must be involved with people. Sometimes the machinations inherent in rug dealing drain all of the pleasure from the objects. I can recall visitations from certain dealers that actually transmute some of the most beautiful things in the world to harbingers of ill will. Overt bargaining conversations become tolerable in confrontation with convoluted bulls--t concerning nebulous theoretic conjecture that obfuscates beauty. I'm often compelled to mount an exhibition of wonderful Turkoman pieces upside down so that so many of our anal-retentive compulsive warp-spin observers would have to arch their backs and pull a muscle or two to properly view the objects.

ORR: We both are saying rugs, but we know that your interests are much broader: textiles, early American things...

Newman: I love all kinds of textiles. In the last number of years I have become increasingly fond of all kinds of Americana. I have been buying painted and decorated American furniture. I have a wonderful collection of American rugs:

Shirred American table rug, c. 1820, 2'1"x1'4 1/2"

yarn-sewn, shirred, and hooked. I find them as interesting and beautiful as anything I have ever handled, and they have great integrity. It is interesting that the wellspring of folk tradition is much the same in all cultures, though the manifestations are different. Among all cultures there is a common thread, sometimes S-, sometimes Z-spun, that connects.

ORR: When you were traveling New England, were you finding and buying American rugs?

Newman: No, and if I have to talk about great missed opportunities, for me it was having Oriental rug blinders on when I was traveling. In addition to visiting rug dealers, I would call on many antique shops that were filled with extraordinary furniture, etc. and I would pay no attention.

ORR: I understand you knew Bob Adamsky, who was one of the early rug dealers.

Newman: That's right, this was all so long ago! Bob also dealt in early iron. I love that stuff now, especially since I restored the house in Vermont. But then I never paid attention. But, one can't know about and buy everything at every given time.

I think you will enjoy this story and it relates to development. I store a number of things in safety deposit boxes in banks. Recently I closed out two of them and, when I went through the pieces, I discovered on the back of what I thought was a late 19th century Ersari animal trapping a serial number and an acquisition date of 1858 in old brown ink. I never would have believed it. I fancy that, although the converse may be true, nevertheless some things may be older than we think they are.

ORR: How good, in your view, is rug scholarship?

Newman: I don't know.

ORR: Asked another way, is there an unseemly link between scholarship and dealership?

Newman: Sometimes, but rarely, there is a seemly link. Michael Franses is a scholar and dealer of great integrity. I have the greatest respect for him. I find him to be a caring person. He doesn't become someone else when he is buying and selling. I have also found him to be a sharing person, often when it is not in his best interest.

I've not studied rugs in any formal sense. How do I know about them? Through observing and handling many pieces and talking with and reading the writings of knowledgeable people a linkage appears, hopefully, that fills in the gaps which good taste and intuition sometimes have. There are trends and threads connecting not only rugs to rugs but rugs to textiles. Often, very old rug designs are imitative of earlier textiles; the converse may also be true. The rya rugs are imitative of shaggy animal skins. In fact, the whole idea of pile seems to me to be an imitation of animal skins.

ORR: In the famous old collections, there were things that are not highly regarded now.

Newman: And much that is...

ORR: All of the great collections had the obligatory Ghiordes prayer rug. Newman: Yes. We become jaded and a good rug from the 18th century doesn't move some of us anymore. We want to see something from the pre-Adam and Eve period. Taste changes and new books are published, exhibitions are hung, and people are learning. With thousands and thousands of rugs coming on the market, there is a weeding out process. People get the auction catalogs, go to the sales, and in many ways the rug auctions determine what rugs are sought after. There is a Catch-22 here, particularly for the dealer who has been in it for a while, put away a few things, paid too much for a few others, and then finds out that the hot group of rugs at auction and in the magazines is not what he is holding.

I don't know whether that answered your question. They didn't know as much as we do today, and we know now more than what we knew a few years ago.

We all develop as we collect. In the early days I bought and preserved hideous things. I was less a dealer than a collector in those times and, eventually, when my sense of color (like location in real estate) and design became more acute, I would get rid of the treasures of yesterday. I will buy hideous commercial things because I know there are people out there clamoring to buy them! A washed and painted Sarouk, anyone?

Wiena: Are these turn of the century rugs?

Newman: No, those aren't so bad. I mean those wondrous Sarouks from the '20s onward.

Wiena: They are very popular in Germany and they import a great number from the United States.

Newman: That's right, and they wash them. I cannot understand this whole cycle. The rugs came to the United States and, because they were too bright for American taste, they were bleached. Then they painted the colors. It happened that some of these painted rugs had a nice rust background, so later on they bleached the rugs again, gambling that they would find good color.

To me these are not Oriental rugs. They are imitations. I think this includes all this stuff from the 1920s except some rugs from Northern Persia.

ORR: Say what you will about the poor Sarouk, but they were well made with quite good wool. Proof of this is the fact that they survive the bleach, paint, and bleach again in relatively good condition.

Newman: Yes, they survive in all of their hideousness. Think about all of the rugs ever made and imagine they had all been made with good dyes. Forget the designs. My word, there would be so many good rugs around today. The introduction of aniline dyes was the beginning of the downfall of the art of the Oriental rug. Oriental rugs are primarily things of color.

What is beauty, as the concept applies to Oriental rugs? They have to have wonderful color.

ORR: Today most commercial rugs are made with chrome dyes, which are quite good. Are they getting it right now?

Newman: Who knows what right is? Once you have lost it, can you find your way back? When they went to the anilines, it was done for purely commercial reasons. Before anilines, dyeing with vegetal dyes was all they knew how to do. All they knew how to do happened to be right. They departed from that. Now they are trying to go back, but all they have accomplished is imitation. So, you construct layer on layer but you don't get back to what was right.

I'm a singer and, when you have a piece of good music and try to change it, interfere with it, you're finished. Mozart knew what he was doing. Just sing it and leave it alone. Ah... but this leaving-alone business. I sometimes fancy a key to artistic creation and comprehension is that development which teaches how to pare down and expose the inner shape. I continue to learn this in my acting and in my singing. Get a grip on the peculiar idiom of a strange language and you will see it there, too. Observe the making of rugs in the old days and it's everywhere. It was the way they did it, unencumbered by untoward interference. Certainly, "in the old days," improvements and developments went forward but always, then, the materials, the sense of what they were doing, their view possessed the inherent naïvete of a sunset reflected on a field of flowers.

I have tremendous respect for Bergi Andonian. He is a bright man and a great dealer. You should interview him. He was bringing in these wonderful Turkish-made reproductions of old rugs. They were absolutely wonderful. I nearly bought one for myself. Can you imagine that? There was only one thing holding me back: they had clipped back the brown to simulate corrosion through age. That disturbed me, and I couldn't buy this otherwise wonderful rug. They had made a beautiful rug, but they couldn't leave it alone.

ORR: We hear you loud and clear, but there is a sidelight on all of this that we find interesting. As with anything new that comes on the market, whether it be digital watches, transistor radios, or video tape recorders, the first generation of product is very expensive. It is only later that economies of scale kick in and the product becomes generally available to everyone. So it was with synthetic dyes. The first wave was expensive and scarce and their very first use was for highlighting in finer rugs. The makers thought the traditional dyes were inferior and that they were improving the product by using the synthetic dyes; today these rugs are rejected because of that tiny spot of synthetic dye.

Flatweave Khorjin Panel, with embroidery in silk, cotton, and metal thread. Early 19th century, 2'7"x2'5 1/2"

Newman: There you have it, the first and fatal interference. The term naïve art for folk art is a very apt expression. They were naïve because they used what was at hand. Beauty springs from the unencumbered.

ORR: Is there a group or category of rugs or textiles that is relatively undiscovered, one out of which a representative collection can be assembled at relatively low cost?

Newman: Yes, Kurdish rugs.

ORR: Do you have any advice for the novice collector?

Newman: You've probably asked the wrong person. I could make up an answer, but it wouldn't be coming from me. I don't really understand that kind of thinking, that kind of collecting. I just collect the things that I like. Representative collection: that is museum-type collecting, collections that are meaningful or make a statement, not so much about the things that are in the collection, rather about the context or the times in which the things were made. Samplers through the centuries, or a collection of samplers, one from each sewing school -- that sort of thing. It is like walking through a field of flowers and looking at only the tulips. I am not a pigeon-hole type of collector.

ORR: How would you define the term "collection"?

Newman: I don't know. If I attempt it, then I fall into the trap, that stamp book/rug collecting thing. I'll try. A collection is the results of the aesthetic taste of a given person tempered by his pocketbook.

ORR: Would you accept that such a collection should have a common theme or thread running through it, rugs from a certain area?

Newman: It may, but there should be no ruling criteria but beauty. If you limit it with anything else, you are back to museum collecting, an anthropological sort of approach where you have to pay as much attention to the good, bad and ugly along with the beautiful. Beauty is everything.

ORR: Do you have any clients, private collectors, with whom you work to build a collection?

Newman: Very few. I would think that with the things I find and buy I would have lots of collectors as clients, but I don't. I happened, some years ago, to meet a nice couple in Vermont. They are collectors and they had always heard of me; they said they always wanted to call and come see me, but they never did. When the ice was broken, they did come to see me and, in a relatively short span, they bought a number of wonderful things. But what prevented them from making the phone call months and years before a chance meeting?

I have a few collectors I work with. I try to understand what they are collecting and where they want to go with their collections. When people come to me to see things, I try to be forthright in telling them what they should buy, irrespective of my profit margin. Sometimes the thing I advise them to buy is more expensive, because I truly believe it is the right thing for them. I would rather see someone pick out one great piece than two or three good pieces. I try to get them to focus on the great piece: one that will advance their collection.

ORR: This is something we have talked about over the past year or so. Why is Ronnie Newman perceived to be unapproachable? You can consider that a rhetorical question.

Wiena: You seem like a nice guy.

Newman: I don't understand it. I am a nice guy. I think people develop deeply ingrained habits. Many dealers, in the old days, would go to 245 Fifth Avenue and not go near the many little shops and galleries that surrounded the building. People are used to buying from certain people. Maybe some people do find me intimidating for some reason; sometimes I find myself intimidating. But, I'm harmless. I would hope that people would call just to see my things, if they really had an interest in acquiring really wonderful objects.

ORR: I know that there is a perception out there that your things are very expensive.

Newman: That is a misconception, but I'll tell you this: I respond to ads in the rug magazines. I call dealers when I see a picture of a rug I think I'd like to acquire. Nobody in this business who knows what he's doing gives great things away. I'm fair. I like good things myself and I'm willing to pay for them; consequently, I must charge for them. But, I have lots of things at all price levels. As I told you before, I have things I don't know I have. People should call me -- talk to me! (These last three words were delivered with a very direct stare as if to the lens of a television camera.)

ORR: Of everything you have sold over the years, what's the ratio of rugs that went to private collectors and to the trade?

Newman: 99.9% to the trade. Presumably, the dealers I sell to sell to private collectors. This is foolish. People could buy these things from me and save money.

ORR: We wonder if it's true that the dealers who buy from you sell the rugs to privates. Don't many rugs simply pass laterally through the trade? We have always pictured thousands of rugs floating around like a sort of nebula, a Milky Way of rugs trapped between various strata of the international rug trade.

Newman: Yes and no. Sometimes the really great things move into the great collections. But there is this body of rugs that you describe. One would have to reason that the rugs, as they kept changing hands, kept increasing in price. But mistakes are made; someone overpays, loses money, and the cycle begins again. If he chooses not to make the mistake history at any price it becomes part of the dealer's permanent collection. But, in the light of present market conditions, the very high prices paid for great rugs in the '80s are sometimes not viable today.

Wiena: Do you offer a buy-back guarantee?

Newman: Absolutely not! I don't offer goods with an umbilical cord to people who are not sure of what they are doing. I don't have a store or a gallery and that policy is more suitable for a dealer who has things on display and available to the general public. But, even so, can any dealer honestly offer a true, unqualified buy-back guarantee? My theory on this is that anyone who offers it has built-in protection. He'll buy back a piece at a time when it behooves him to do so to make money on the piece twice.

ORR: What happens to these guarantees when there is a sea change in the market? In the late 1970s and very early '80s, many dealers offered buy-backs at some set percentage of increase. Then the music stopped and memories proved short. Is there a dealer alive who hasn't had some prized piece in his personal collection on which he had several "If you ever decide to sell this..." offers? Then the weekend turns into Monday morning and the dealer's phone calls are not returned.

Newman: That's right, forget it! Look, buying and selling is contingent on market conditions, and value, so-called, on demand and supply. I buy back things because I have full confidence in the things I buy and sell -- most of them, certainly not the purely commercial stuff. When you are fortunate enough to be working with someone building a collection, and you see that person and the collection maturing with the collection moving to a higher plane, you have an obligation to facilitate that movement. It is to your long-term benefit. But, as a general merchandising, across-the-board policy, you have to assume that the dealer who buys things back has jacked up the price of the rug he is currently offering to cover himself.

ORR: Tell us about the mistake you recently made.

Newman: Oh, please, must I? No, I don't want to think about it, let alone talk about it.

Wiena: You cannot leave a good story untold!

Newman: There are many of those. No, I will just say, when you are looking at a rug, don't be in a hurry and always take things outside to be viewed in daylight. When I am selling, I encourage people to visit during daylight hours to look at things outside. I forgot my own rule. Color is the most important thing in rugs, like location in real estate. One forgets that at his peril.

Wiena: Do you have any Rya rugs?

Newman: I have had a few. I have a very interesting Scandinavian piece right now. It has no warp and weft. The thick yarns are passed through a fabric and knotted and there is an applied fringe. Is there a technique called Flosta? It is probably a cushion cover made during the Victorian era. There are wonderful pillow covers made in the 15th century in which they imitated designs that appear on some of the rugs painted by Crivelli.

ORR: How long will you stay with rugs? Have you ever thought of retirement?

Newman: I will always be doing something in the field of aesthetics. We have talked about American antiques. I could get a lot more involved there.

ORR: Tell us about the Ronnie Newman collection, and we would like you to dwell on the question, can a dealer have a collection. Is it not a conflict of interests?

Newman: The collection is very diverse -- eclectic. It contains pieces from all areas and the common thread is that all of the pieces are very old.

Jim Opie won't appreciate this but, in my opinion, in the broad spectrum of Oriental rugistan, the available pieces from South Persia are the least beautiful. In the main, if you look at a lot of very old rugs, you see fewer really beautiful ones from South Persia than from nearly all of the other weaving areas. There are some very lovely ones, but I find many of them horrible. Even the bagfaces. There are so many of them. But I think you find more beautiful ones from Azerbaijan and the Caucasus, for example. I find the South Persian designs formulaic and boring.

ORR: Is age the chief determining factor for you?

Newman: Absolutely, and most South Persian things you see in the market are late. I have a few really wonderful South Persian things, but they are old, period pieces. I think that in the late 19th century tons of goods were made and exported from South Persia, and that is what we see today.

The other part of your question was, "how can dealers collect?" They have to collect; that is their inventory. Do they have rugs they will absolutely not sell? Those things that they put the higher price on, a price designed to discourage the all but most determined buyer, constitute the dealer's collection. If the dealer has a store, those rugs may be in his home. But they will be seen by his very best customers, who will be invited to the home socially due to the dealer-customer relationship, and then the tug of war begins.

ORR: Do you mean the aforementioned, "If you ever decide to sell that piece..."?

Newman: Exactly. I will sell anything, but I have got to be paid on the basis that these are the very best things I have ever handled. I have things that are unspeakably rare. I have some very odd rugs. I am not now attracted to book rugs, though I have bought a lot of them because they are so easily saleable. Wiena: What are book rugs?

Newman: These are rugs that appear in all of the basic rug books, and people think they have to own one of each type. You know, the Lori-Pambak, the Peripedil, the Akstafa. There is the feeling, "Well, I just bought that one, now I can move on to the next one."

ORR: It is something like fixing stamps in an album over the illustration of the stamp.

Wiena: Tell us about some of your rugs.

Newman: I would bore you.

ORR: I have always been intrigued by the story of you buying the rug at Hubley's in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the early Turkoman piece that only you recognized for what it was.

Newman: See how stories get around? I wasn't even at the auction. I bought it because a friend -- a couple of friends -- told me about the piece. There are so many stories like that.

I actually bought the piece over the phone. I couldn't believe what my friends were telling me about it, but I trusted their judgment. I bought it and, when I received it, it was monumental. It had been part of the upholstery of a piece of furniture. It is an ancient, really ancient fragment of a Turkoman saddle cover. It is so unusual that I don't know what to relate it to, the tribe or area. It is a very plain piece and the wool has nearly a metallic quality to it. Ancient wools have taken the dyes so that there is almost an inner light to them. I think it is probably Saryk or that area. We know so little about all of this.

I have another piece, a large, white ground rug fragment from the Amu Darya region. It has a very Seljuk look about it. I put things away and take them out after awhile for a fresh look, and it hits you all over again. I did this recently with this piece and it looked very, very old, perhaps 15th century.

I have a great interest in very, very old Chinese rugs. Years ago, many times when I would go out looking for rugs, and I recall a specific incident in New Jersey near where I live, I would absolutely ignore a heap of rugs seen from the shop doorway upon hearing from the proprietor that there was not a Chinese rug in it. How many times did I do such a thing? And, how much did I really know about ancient Chinese rugs at that time?

Ningxia Chair Back, 18th century, 2'2"x1'10 1/2"

Wiena: Are there still things to be found in antique shops?

Newman: Of course, in the shop we drive by. Nothing in the shop we stop at. How can we know? I think that there is less than in the past because there are more people looking and antique dealers have more knowledge about textiles now. (Making this remark, Mr. Newman fixed us with a baleful stare).

ORR: Mr. Newman has not been keen on publications such as ours. He feels that by educating people we have made his job more difficult.

Newman: It is the Catch-22. By the dissemination of knowledge, it is made more difficult for dealers to buy things at prices where they can make a little money -- a killing if not a slaughter. On the other hand the publications have created new markets.

I would like to say something about dealers. Dealers in Oriental rugs are not as supportive of each other as, say, dealers in art are. In the main, rug dealers are not as professional as antique dealers, for example.

ORR: That is a good point. Dealers in other areas of the arts and collecting have strong associations. The New Hampshire Antique Dealers Association is a very strong group that puts on one of the best annual shows in the country.

Newman: We have our conferences.

ORR: But, only because a mix of dealers, privates, and scholars banded together, ad hoc, in the absence of any kind of strong trade association. Have you ever entertained the idea of operating a gallery?

Newman: Not really. Well, I have thought about it and even discussed the idea with friends, but most of them advised against it. Now, I am glad I didn't because, in times like these, I probably would have lost a lot of money and had to close it up.

ORR: Have you ever staged an exhibition?

Newman: No, but I would like to. I would like to put on a show called "Masterpieces in Miniature." Friends joke about my million dollar place mat collection. I have an incredible collection of small pieces: saddlebags, small antique Chinese rugs, etc. I have a small Chinese kang cover with a very weird structure which probably predates any other Chinese rug I have ever seen. The design as well as the handle is textile-like.

ORR: Would it be a sale show?

Newman: Why not?

ORR: Ronnie Newman's Red Tag Show and Sale.

Newman: I would have a red tag on everything before the show opened; the unavailable is the most desirable. Pekka, do you collect rugs?

Wiena: I discovered rugs about five years ago. And, I don't know how to say this, because I am a business-type of person...

Newman: An entrepreneur.

Wiena: Yes, thank you. I couldn't become a rug dealer because I didn't know anything about rugs, so I decided to publish a magazine.

Newman: (Ronnie Newman has fixed us once again with a baleful stare.) That sounds like a familiar story.

ORR: Moving right along, have you come across any of these fake Shahsavan pieces?

South Caucasian Soumak panel, design reminiscent of Azerbaijan embroideries, early 19th century, 3'x1'4"

Newman: If you mean the soumak bags, yes. Some have gone at auction and some people, dealers, wondered why I wasn't bidding on them. They look too mechanical and they also look too good to be true. Actually, I don't know if I am so good at spotting them. I am considering a piece now, and I can't make up my mind about it. I suppose it's all right, but I have this nagging feeling. Yes, I am good at it.

What is your understanding? That they are ravelling old kilims? This gets back to our discussion of naïve folk art and the need to just leave things alone.

ORR: Have you ever been to a rug producing country?

Newman: No, I don't fly. The story about that is long, complicated and boring, and I won't tell it.

Actually we here in America live in a great rug producing country, and I don't just mean in the Southwest; I think early American textiles are wonderful.

ORR: You buy and, some would say, sell a lot at auctions.

Newman: I like auctions. I know a lot of other dealers don't. They think the auctions are competition.

Wiena: Do you bid incognito?

Newman: I do a lot of telephone bidding. I guess it's because I want to be unobserved. I prefer to avoid negative interactions, and I find sometimes that is impossible. So, if I stay by myself, I just have to deal with them coming from myself, which is quite enough. I find it easier to keep my own counsel. There are some dealers who only start bidding when someone they recognize as knowledgeable starts to bid. But, I like auctions -- I love auctions. It is all very exciting, histrionic. I shouldn't like them because they are structured such that I and others can get too involved and pay more than we should.

Auctions cost money, and probably the only time I ever wish I had endless funds is when I am at a good auction. Back in the '80s I remember that when I wanted something, nothing, absolutely nothing, would stop me. Not now. Now, I have to really sit on my hands. Back then, even if one paid top-of-the-market in October, one could sell things for a profit in November. It is not like that now. The market has become quite unsteady and the auctions have become very emotional.

I think Sotheby's, in particular, does a wonderful job. Their presentation is wonderful. They always have a lot of good things and some great ones as well. Skinner, too, presents some wonderful sales, with some interesting odd-ball pieces. Occasionally someone will come up to me at such a sale and say, "What a disappointing sale." Why do they bother? If he is honest, I feel sorry for him, sorry that he can't see the obvious, even if there is just one great piece. Or, if he is dishonest, it is an annoyance that I am being victimized for a set-up. I think that there is a lot of that kind of chicanery going on, setting people up in advance so as to preclude their competition. In general, I don't like to talk about things before an auction. People will ask my opinion on a certain piece and nearly always I'll say, "See me after the sale and we'll talk about it."

ORR: Do you feel different, or act different when you have a major item of your own in a sale?

Newman: It's the same kind of excitement, so it doesn't seem any different to me whether I'm buying or selling. Sometimes I am doing both. I don't mind being an underbidder. You get the same rush, and it costs you nothing. You don't get the thing, but sometimes that doesn't matter. Sometimes when I get the piece, I look at it the next morning and I say, "What did I do that for?" So, auctions can be dangerous for me, but I love them. Auctions are a wonderful phenomenon: wonderful drama! There is the desire for a person to have something for himself, coupled with the almost equal desire to prevent the other person from having it. There can be a lot of vindictiveness going on. You know, "I'm going to really stick it to him." But, you can also stick it to yourself.

Wiena: The action in the auction makes people take a position. You know, you have to make MacDonald-esque presentations; it can't be "Do you want cheese or lettuce or tomato?" because they can't make a choice. "Here is the thing now, and we are selling it."

Newman: Exactly! There is none of this, "I'll think about it," or "If you can come down on the price, call me."

ORR: Isn't there a whole different buy/sell psychology working at auction? When you see a piece in a shop and, even if it is the most wonderful thing, your underlying thought is, "This has been on public display. Knowledgeable people have seen it, and they didn't buy it. What do they know about it that I don't?" But, at auction, your desire for the piece is ratified by the other bidders.

Newman: That's right. Why do you think dealers choose to bring their things to auction? It is often because they weren't able to sell the piece on their own. It doesn't always happen, but it happens often enough that a dealer can't sell something for, say, $5,000, but he can put in a sale and get $8,000. I know of one instance where a piece sold for considerably more than the figures I just used to a person who had formerly passed on the piece at a much lower price.

I don't think much of this has to do with aesthetic considerations. The market is mutable.

There is something very baffling to me. I concluded that there is a great deal of insecurity among rug dealers -- perhaps among all arts dealers. There is this ridiculous notion implied when someone brings something absolutely wonderful to you and your first question is, "Who else has seen this?" Some of the most discerning and knowledgeable people have not bought things that they should have "because it has been around." Early on, I observed something, a mind set, among certain dealers who weren't dealing in great things but in viable commercial goods. They would refer to a previously offered and rejected rug as a "whore."

People like things to be absolutely unseen. I had to miss an exhibition once because I had to give a concert and a dealer friend said, "You don't want to see that show anyway; there isn't anyone who hasn't seen the stuff." How does anyone know that? Who has seen these things? Are they people whose judgments I respect? Were they looking for the same things I would be looking for? Again, I know good dealers who have passed on things they should have bought. These same good dealers have bought things they shouldn't have bought because they were so-called "fresh to the market." It's all so ridiculous.

ORR: So, we shouldn't buy the Mona Lisa were it offered?

Newman: There is something else that I experience, and perhaps others have as well. If I am having a down day, you know, a gray day, then all the color drains from everything! On such a day it's best that I not get involved in buying or selling anything.

ORR: This may be the downside of how you have chosen to operate. You deal in the rare and unusual. If you dealt in more mainstream things, things you know you can sell right away, your buy decision would be a given, automatic.

What about rug books?

Newman: I like the pictures. There should be lots of illustrations in color. Without them, it's like looking at a field of flowers in black and white. I like to read about rugs when the articles are not overly obtuse. I have to admit that I have not read all of the rug books, but I've perused many of them. I use them as reference works.

I think the text describing a rug should be in immediate proximity to the photo of it. I like books about esoterica. I loved the Rautenstengel book on the so-called Turkoman eagle group. I collect those pieces. I think that they are wonderful. I was about to say that they exceed the Salors in beauty, then I was going to say they equal the Salors in beauty, but I want to take it all back and say that most very early Turkomans are nearly equal in beauty. I have some Yomuds that are unbelievable.

ORR: Age makes beauty?

Newman: I know it sounds simplistic. Age does make beauty. Most old rugs are beautiful. Certainly there are variances among them. This is better than that, and that is better than the other. Rug people love doing that: pitting one rug against the other. When you are in the presence of a 200-year-old rug, try to tell me that it is not beautiful. I have never seen a reaaly ugly ancient rug. I have seen some that are better than others from the same group. There is just something there. They stand unencumbered and complete within their own culture. It is the difference between the chicken laying an egg in a nest of her own making in the corner of a field rather than doing it on schedule in a coop, a prison built for her by the farmer. I am speaking about a lack of contrivance. It is contrivance that ruins things.

ORR: We would like to return for a moment to your development in rugs. I had a friend who was a very good guitar player. I knew him when he was learning. It seemed one day he couldn't play and the next he could.

Newman: I don't recall anything like that; for me it was a gradual progression. One thing I have always had going for me is a good intuitive sense of aesthetics that builds on itself. Some days it is more acute than others.

ORR: Is it such that, if you took a sudden interest in 17th century English miniatures, within a relatively short time you would be a player in that field?

Newman: Yes, that is happening to me now with my interest in Americana. Furniture is a vast field and people deliberately forge things. We have a little of that in rugs but nothing like in furniture. I am not talking about embellishment, but outright forgery. There are experts who can tell in a minute. I have looked at furniture supposedly with original paint offered me by people who have been in the trade a long, long time. The pieces had been blatantly repainted. I cannot be sure that the person was actually trying to put something over on me; there is a good possibility he didn't know.

ORR: Does it happen that people offer things to you which are so inappropriate that you wonder if they have any idea what you are all about?

Newman: Sometimes. Once I ran an ad with an incredible North Persian bagface. Someone sent me several photographs of pieces he thought were related to mine; the things were horrible! He was probably one of these people who thinks something is important because it vaguely resembles something thought important by someone knowledgeable. Perhaps the person knew and was testing me or, more likely, he didn't have a clue.

ORR: We needed to photograph a friend's Salor S-group piece for an article and she was kind enough to stop off at the rug show we were attending to deliver the piece to us. While we were examining it, a Manhattan old rug dealer, Sam Hakim, stopped by. "You like those?" he asked, "I have piles of them in New York."

All: He didn't have a clue!

Newman: Ah, we are back to Turkomans. Even for the old rug dealers, the Turkoman secret is a very difficult one to crack. Even people who have deep understandings of other rug areas are eluded by Turkomans. They are very strange rugs. The more involved with them I get, the more strange they become. I sometimes wonder if they aren't some sort of put-on. (I'm just kidding!) I have a mystic sense of them. I once thought the gul was sort of an aerial view of looking down into a yurt. There is something about them. They enchant us. Actually, they are quite contrived with their formal hierarchy of guls and layout. I can assuage some of these feelings by thinking that they are Turkoman interpretations of other things.

ORR: Do you distrust them?

Newman: I don't know. I suppose it is a sort of intellectual distrust. I wonder about them. I wonder what this is all about. I find this less so with the Ersari pieces in the ikat designs. But this whole gul business is very mystical. It's like looking at cave drawings, rings in the sand, Stonehenge. I have some very early Turkomans, 18th century and earlier.

ORR: Are there any concrete things you can point to -- differences in the wools, for example? Is it possible that the wools evolved due to changes in the environment?

Newman: There is something to that. You alluded earlier to the Turkoman saddle piece I have.

ORR: I wish you had brought it to this interview.

Newman: I could have; it's in a vault. When did you ask me about it?

ORR: Yesterday.

Newman: No, I couldn't have done it. That was my pigeon day. The wool is like none I have ever seen before. It has an iridescent quality, like the finest spun copper wire when it ceases to be wire. The corrosion is a quarter inch deep. I owned it for some time before I even discovered the brown wool buried deeply between the blue and the red. It is a very unusual piece: Turkish knots with solid color, and a wave design. It is part of a saddle cover. It has wear from the rider's thighs.

Another extraordinary piece is the one I advertised with you a few months ago.

ORR: The tentband fragment.

Newman: That is a piece that for the longest time I didn't understand. It is three-feet long; I had another, longer fragment that I sold. (A pained expression appears on Mr. Newman's face.) I put the smaller piece into a Skinner sale, and it didn't sell. I kept wondering about it and finally had the weft material analyzed. It is silk. The piece was probably made by the weavers of one of the so-called Eagle Groups.

ORR: We had the transparency while you were having it tested. You called and we had to change the ad's caption as we were going to press. We wanted you to call it "Eagle Group," but...

Newman: I know, I know, but I thought people who cared about this sort of thing would know.

ORR: They do now.