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GADY’S ORIENTAL RUG GALLERY-USA

15-60 POLLITT DRIVE

APARTMENT 2B

FAIR LAWN,NEW JERSEY

NJ 07410

TEL: 1-732.492.3683

GADY’S ORIENTAL RUG GALLERY-TURKEY

KLODFARER CAD.ALTAN ISMERKEZI

KAT:3 NO 56 SULTANAHMET

ISTANBUL

TURKEY

TEL: 0090-212.4584525

Why Oriental Rugs?

Oriental rugs add beauty and luxury to any home, while their increasing scarcity makes them a valuable investment.With fewer rugs available, those that are deserve the same respect and attention given to other works of art.Correct selection,care and cleaning will keep a rug in good condition,lengthen its useful life,assure its investment value and allow it to be used and enjoyed by generations to come.

Each handmade rug is unique;it is an individual creation of an artist and craftsman.The genius who creates a rug has to follow up his initial concept with months and sometimes years of hard and patient work to embody his moment of inspiration.Thus,every rug stands as a testimony to the infinite care,enthusiasm,skill and pleasure of an often unknown artist who may have worked far away in a different age and place and yet whose aesthetic values can still be vividly experienced and shared today.

Little is known of the development of rug weaving over the next 1500 years.  Certainly,the craft spread throughout Asia and the Middle East through Turkey and up into the Caucasus,along North Africa and into Spain.From these countries,differing types of weaving emerged.Nomadic tribesmen wove rugs for their own domestic use.Rugs were also made in villages and weaving became a cottage industry with scope for making larger and also more delicate rugs;these rugs might be bartered or traded with travelling merchants.Large towns sprang up and the most skillful weavers gravitated towards them.Here,with the encouragement of merchants,rug making became an industry and weavers were organized in groups to supply custom works of art to order,often woven with the finest silks.Finally,powerful rulers,anxious to encourage the arts and thereby enchance their personal prestige,set up court workshops in which magnificent rugs were woven for the palace;some of the greatest artists of the time designed such rugs.In 16th century Persia the splendid baroque palace rugs were created which are now housed in the world’s most prestigious museums.A number of 15th and 16th century groups of Turkish rugs are indeed still called after such artists as Holbein and Lotto in whose paintings they appear.

The art of rug weaving in Persia began to decline from the second half of the seventeenth century as the country became involved in successive wars with the Turks.This decline was largely in the area of rugs commissioned for the court and rug weaving in the towns was not curtailed.This declining trend accelerated by the Afghan occupation of 1722,was not reversed until the foundation of the Qajar dynasty by Agha Mohammed in 1974.In Turkey rug weaving showed no such break.

In the seventeenth and early eighteenth century rugs were made in the Caucasus including the famous Dragon rugs.Distinguished pieces were also woven during this period in Eastern Turkestan and posibly in China.

With the eclipse of the great Persian palace rugs the tradition of weaving was carried on into the nineteenth century by nomads and village craftsmen in Persia.In the nineteenth century quality and artistic merit started to recover and the manufactureof pile rugs began to prosper as trading links developed with the rich areas of industrial Europe.Trading reached its peak in the late part of the century but by the end of the century rug producion in many areas of Persia began to decline due to overcommercialization and the advent of the first chemical dyes.Nevertheless good and sometimes excellent rugs have been made in the twentieth century.As Persia industrialized inevitably the output of all handmade rugs in the traditional areas declined.Industry,mechanization and prosperity have enticed the weavers from their looms.The discovery of oil in Iran effected a complete change, many onetime weavers became employed by the oil and other industries at excellent hourly wages.

Rugs are still being made in most of the established rug-weaving countries but the production of rugs of high artistic merit is limited.Needless to say the price of such works when avaible is high and the law of supply and demand is pushing prices ever higher.Today hand-knotted rugs varying quality are made on a commercial basis in many areas including India,Pakistan,Romania,China and Nepal.Although rugs from these areas are not comparable with those of the past,they are playing an important role in the market today,giving the rug lover a chance to own and enjoy a handmade rug at a reasonable price.