OF PERSIAN RUGS, SPECIFICALLY

Chapter V

OF PERSIAN RUGS, SPECIFICALLY

To describe in detail the characteristics of all the classes of rugs and carpets that have been mentioned would be hardly possible, even with a hundred object lessons. The peculiar features of some of them, however, may be noted. But first be it observed that the term “antique” as applied to rugs is generally sadly abused. A rug is not beautiful simply because it is old. It must have been fine when new, it must have been carefully preserved, and it must rejoice in a ripe old age. Time must have dealt kindly with it, and only softened and mellowed its original beauties. Let the antiques which are but rags and tatters, however valuable for their design, hang in the museums, where they belong! The only merit of one of these genuine remnants of three or four centuries ago is in their originality of design. They were creations and not imitations, and made by true artists and not merely skilled weavers. Choose you, instead, a more modern rug of fine quality which will improve from year to year as long as you may live to enjoy it.

It may also be premised that the sizes of rugs run from about three feet to six feet wide by four to ten feet long. Few rugs approach squareness, and rugs wider than seven or eight feet are classed as carpets.

Some of the most beautiful pieces used to come, and still do, in the form of “strips,” “hall rugs,” or “stair rugs,” according to trade parlance. They are worthy of a better name, which is their Persian term, “Kinari.” They were made in pairs to complete the carpeting of a Persian room, being placed on either side of a centre rug, with two shorter strips at the top and bottom. More fine specimens of these long strips are now to be found than of smaller sizes, and they should not be neglected by the collector. By artistic arrangement and device they will accommodate themselves to almost any house, somewhere, and few choicer prizes can be bought to-day.

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