OUR COLLECTION

After Restoration

When thinking of buying your first rug,you need to establish your principal purpose,that is,whether you are buying for an investment,collecting, or because you are furnishing your home.If you are an investor you will be concerned most with value and re-sale potential.If you are a collector,intrinsic beauty and rarity would be uppermost in your mind.If,however,you are buying oriental rugs for the purpose of furnishing,the colour,design and the appearance of the rug in the setting of your home are the most important considerations.Whichever category your buying falls into,ultimately it will be affected by your financial means.You must also bear in mind the purpose for which the rug will be used after it has been acquired.Is it to go on the floor,and if so,will it have a lot of wear in an entrance hall,or light wear,as in a bedroom?Or is it to be hung on the wall to be admired but not walked on,or kept in a rug chest to be brought out on special occasions?

BUYING FOR INVESTMENT

Runaway inflation has made all fine art objects valuable investments to be considered in much the same way as stocks and shares and real estate.Unlike stocks and shares,they give tangible pleasure and unlike real estate,they are portable.Oriental rugs are one of the few categories of art objects which are truly international and for which a ready demand exists in all developed societies throughout the world.This characteristic means that they are a currency in their own right,and are insulated from the ups and downs attendant upon less specialized art forms.In the East,handmade rugs have traditionally served both as articles of furniture or decoration and as a store of personal wealth.In countries where governments and currencies are often unstable,rugs stand alongside gold as a means by which prosperous citizens provide themselves with a pension in old age.

Old handmade rugs have proved to be an outstanding investment since World War II,and have more than kept up with the rate of inflation.As with all other forms of investment,there can be no certainty that what has increased in value in the past will continiue to increase in the future.But handmade rugs are becoming scarce and ever more costly to produce;they have a universal appeal and thus the ingredients of a successful investment remain.

The old adage,that it pays to buy the best you can afford,applies as much to rugs as it does to other commodities;it is doubly important where investment is the prime objective.While any good handmade rug is likely to appreciate in value,some will appreciate faster than others.These are the rugs that are outstanding specimens of their type,costing perhaps twice as much as the avarage good example.On the whole,antique rugs in good condition are usually a better investment than newly made rugs because of their rarity.

Investment buyers must consider marketability,and they should try to reduce,as far as possible,the margin between buying and selling.The margin is important since the bigger it is the more difficult it is for the investorto recoup his original cost and start again.Specific advice on what to buy is not easy to give,partly because the answer depends largely on personal taste and partly because markets,fashions and relative values change slightly from year to year.Nevertheless, it is advisable to concentrate on buying pieces that are genuinely fine,old and rare.Outstanding rugs for investment are nomadic and village rugswoven in the nineteenth century, especially Caucasian and Turkoman pieces such origins as Kazak,Kuba,Shirvan and Bokhara.Also worth considering are Persian city rugs of the period 1880-1910, when particulary good rugs were produced in the Kashan,Tebriz,Sarouk and Kerman regions. Apart from these examples,the choice is enormous,and still includes,for those who can afford it,the occasional opportunity of buying a sixteenth or seventeenth century museum piece.

As far as modern rugs are concerned,it is a curiosity of the market that even fine examples are often poorly regardedby the trade and by discriminating private buyers until they have acquired the patina of age.When a modern Nain or silk Qum rug comes to be sold by its first owner within the year of purchase,it will normally fetch less than the current wholesale price for an equivalent new piece.It is reasonable to assume that eventually such rugs will gain in value,and to that extent they present an interesting investment opportunity for the buyer who wants something that can be used in the home as well.An investment buyer who is not himself an expert should always seek expert advice.You are welcome to ask for free advice or to buy a good antique rug.

BUYING AS A COLLECTOR

A collector may also be an investor,but his first interest lies in the rugs themselves.The collector will frequently concentrate on a particular type of rug-for example,small Turkoman pieces produced by a particular tribe.A collector will study the subject in depth and will buy and read all available literature on the subject.His aim is to build up a collection which will provide him with at least one example of each subdivision of his subject,and when this is achieved,to increase the quality of his collection by weeding out the poorer specimens and buying nothing but the best.

The established collector is not likely to be in need of advice either on what to buy or how to go about it.In this field personal choice and whim rule the day.As to the novice collector,he may consider some of the following choices:nineteenth century kilims from Turkey,the Caucasus and Persia;Turkoman storage bag faces (known as chuvals,torbas and mafrash),small Baluchi and Qausqai bags and rugs.If the collector is affluent he could set his sights on sixteenth century Persian and Turkish carpet fragments or early to mid-nineteenth century Caucasian village rugs of the finest quality.The new collector should always befriend a rug dealer and ask him to look out for examples of what he is seeking.

FURNISHING YOUR HOME WITH ORIENTAL RUGS

Many people do not have the time or the inclination to become “involved” with rugs,but like to have them about the home to give warmth and create an air of opulence.Rugs in the home are either used for covering the floor or for hanging as a rug decoration; each purpose requires a different kind of rug: strong and heavy to walk on or light to hang.For hanging,use either your most valuable pieces (provided they are reasonably light in weight and have strong warps) or your old but worn pieces with high quality designs and colours.Many an antique rug can be rescued from the floor and ,when cleaned up,can be given a new lease of life as a wall hanging.When buying,if you cannot afford expensive rugs you should not hesitate to buy cheaper examples from your local rug dealer.For some purposes even a worn ‘old wreck’ of a carpet will look ‘right’ and give a few years of service for only a small outlay.Whatever your budget,there will be delightful rugs of some age and quality that you can afford.