We are Completely Crowdfunded!

We’ve just achieved our target £30,000 through crowdfunding on the remarkable Crowdcube web platform!

36 Investors trusted anything from £10 to £7,460 in our business!

We have seen the future and it works!

Rugs as Art on the Wall part two

It was no passing fancy, that last post. We are serious about rugs as art – just look at the rugs we currently have on the walls of our shop in Bath! How well they work as decoration, inspiration and visual satisfaction; all things you look for in the art you hang on your walls.

A Sherkate Zabol Rug from Iran

This Sherkate Zabol (wonderful name!), for instance, pictured here hanging on our shop wall, at under 5 pence per square centimetre , is a great deal less expensive than most contemporary paintings of this size.

A gorgeous Kaskuli hanging above our Anthony Stern glassware

This Kashkuli from south-western Iran makes a delightful work of art for your wall, also at less than 5p per square centimetre.

The Fascinating Geometry of a Kilim

Or how about a flat-weave kilim for your walls, or cover for a table, chest or even a sofa? You can see the top of Joy Pryor’s chair, since this kilim is hanging behind her desk. This costs less than a single penny per square metre – you would be very hard put to find anything resembling a work of art for that money!

You Don’t have to Put Rugs on the Floor – Oriental Rugs as Art

One could define a work of art as the product of deliberately arranging something or things in a way that influences and affects one or more of the senses, emotions and intellect of the observer. Paintings, murals and tapestries are the art forms usually associated with walls, but most hand-made oriental rugs are so gorgeous they easily compete with them as art to go on your walls, or as art-covers for chests, sofas and doors. Or saddle-bags for your camel. Rugs are certainly deliberate arrangements of wool and silk and colour that affect your emotions and intellect in a most positive way, they are rug art! It’s not difficult to see oriental rugs as art!

Vermeer's Music Lesson uses semi-transparent glazes to create the effect of light on the rug draped over the table on the right.

There can be no question that hand-woven rugs are works of art. And they are made by artisans (a word that has been making something of a comeback) practising the art of rug-weaving. As long as rugs and kilims have been used as floor coverings – and that’s a few millennia – they have also been hung on walls and draped over tables, chests, doors and camels. Their warmth, amazing colours and centuries-old patterns makes them inspiring works of art. Hanging a rug on your wall is as easy as stitching a velcro strip on the back.

Fra Bartolomeo's Annunciation of 1252 is the earliest known European painting to show an oriental rug (on the floor between the two figures).

And such is the richness of their patterns and colours that rugs have been playing a central role in that more traditional art form, painting, from as early as the 13th Century. Indeed there are more depictions of oriental rugs in paintings of the period than there are actual surviving rugs from that time. Indeed, the study of these paintings is one of the main source of information on the history of rug making. These rugs also demonstrate how Christian and Islamic cultures

Hans Holbein the Younger's Portrait of the merchant Georg Gisze, 1532, with rug-covered table.

started to intertwine: they are symbols of luxury and status of Middle-Eastern origin in European painting.

At Oriental Rugs of Bath we are very keen to hear of your experience of hand-woven rugs as art. Please go to our Facebook page and post your pictures of what you’ve seen on your travels or how you’ve been using rugs to light up your walls, tables, chests or camels.

And as I keep saying, rugs make excellent saddlebags for your camel!

The Short Encyclopaedia of Oriental Rugs – Antique Wash, Afshar Rugs, Afshar Rugs

Welcome back to the February edition of the Encyclopaedia of Rugs from Oriental Rugs of Bath:

For those that don’t know, every so often we do a blog post about the many different types of Rugs that we sell including explanations of the the terminology involved in making them and also where they come from. Read on to find out more:

Afghan Rugs are hand-knotted in villages and workshops in Afghanistan. Tra-ditionally they have an elephant foot pattern and are famous for their beautiful red colours. Our Afghan rugs are very durable, with a thick pile and are beautiful carpets well worth their price.

Afshar Rugs are hand knotted by members of the Turkic Afshar tribe, many of whom are still nomads in the south of Iran. The rugs often have a red and blue geometrical pattern. With their primitive beauty, Afshar Rugs are regarded as some of the best examples of nomadic art.

A great example of an Afshar rug from Oriental Rugs of Bath

Antique Wash is a chemical or natural process that tones down colours, de-signed to simulate aging. Also called tea washing because the overall brown cast gives the effect of having dunked the whole rug in tea. It is one of a few post-production treatments used to alter the visual presentation of the yarn.

 

Join Oriental Rugs of Bath on Google+

Oriental Rugs of Bath now has a Google Plus page to allow our fans to interact with us using this amazing new social networking site. Google+ has been described as a cross between Facebook and Twitter with some brilliant features even if the terminology is a bit different. For example, your Wall in Facebook is called the Stream on Google+ and you don’t follow people or add them as your friend but add them to your Circles.

If you would like to recieve Oriental Rugs of Bath’s posts on Google+ simply create a Google account and then add us to you circles:

From Saris to Quilts

Joy Pryor modelling a Silk Kantha Quilt

When we were in Jaipur at the end of December, we found a marvellous supplier of hand-made textiles. One of his specialities is quilts, shawls and scarves made with Kantha. First practised by the women of Bengal, kantha work has spread throughout most of northern India where it is the most popular form of embroidery practised by rural women. They typically use old saris and layer them with kantha running stitch to make light blankets, scarves, shawls, throws, quilts and bedspreads, especially for children, as well as covers for mirrors, boxes, and pillows. In the best examples, the entire cloth is covered with running stitch with flower, animal and bird motifs. The stitching on the cloth gives it a slight wrinkled, wavy effect. Kantha is similar to the decorative running stitch of Japanese sashiko quilting. Kantha originated from the way in which housewives mended old clothes by taking out a strand of thread from the colourful border of their saris and making simple designs with them.

an Oriental Rugs of Bath silk kantha quilt

Oriental Rugs of Bath is featuring quilts (here) made from cotton, silk and silk ikat saris as well as scarves and shawls made from silk saris – you can see the scarves here and the shawls here. The colours and textures are very striking, as are the patchwork effects these women achieve.

Latin Jazz in our Oriental Rug Shop

Oriental Rugs of Bath makes the Coolest Location

Last Saturday Knock on Wood, a Latin, Celtic, Blues Jazz band based in Bath asked if they could take some publicity shots in the shop. We were delighted that they thought our shop a suitably exotic setting. You can hear some of their highly musical and delightful tracks here. Who knows where this will lead: sitar players on flying carpets; sufi oudists singing their hearts out?  Can’t wait to find out!

Kurdish Weavings of Khurasan

This article was actually written by Ed Stott for the Oriental Rug and Textile Society Newsletter (the mechanics of WordPress are such that I [William Pryor] am listed as author).

The North-East Persian province of Khurasan was for many centuries a lawless self-governed land where the central government had little influence. Surrounded by the Revand, Kopei and Elburz mountain ranges in the North, South, North- & South-West, the province was heavily depopulated by Genghis Khan’s Mongols in the 13th century. In the 16th century the Safavid Persian Kings deported en masse three Kurdish tribes from Northern Kurdistan to the land around the town of Quchan to act as a check on Uzbek expansion into the province. The Southern route of the Silk Road passed through this new Kurdish enclave, which gave the Kurds a rich source to which to sell the produce of their farms and their weavings. But by the mid-19th century the rural villages were deserted and most of the population had moved into fortified towns, due to the slaving raids by Turkmen and, to some extent, Belouch tribes. The Turkmen were mostly from Tekke and Yomut tribes. In a letter to the Russian Tsar, the then British Prime Minister Gladstone referred to these tribes as the “scourge of the earth” and encouraged their complete annihilation.
A Quchan Kurd Bag Face with Tekke & Yomut Designs

A Quchan Kurd Bag Face with Tekke & Yomut Designs

Given what the Kurds suffered, it is strange that during this period they copied both Turkmen and Belouch carpet designs into their own weaving, although it might be due to the inter- marriage between Kurd men and Turkmen women. They still produce a wide range of weavings that include piled, sumak and flat-woven items. Many of the rugs have designs associated with the Kurds’ origins in Central Anatolia and Northern Kurdistan. These rugs are often very thick (temperatures in Khurasan Province drop to as low as –40oC during the winter), and are collectively known in the West as Kordi or Quchan Kurd weavings. In the UK these weavings are currently relatively inexpensive, although good naturally dyed 19th-century pieces are becoming harder to source. Pieces made during the mid-20th century are still available and are inexpensive. Many pieces made during this period still used natural dyes. The pieces range from piled rugs to sumak salt bags and chantehs. Some of the kilim balishts are also interesting. Earlier pieces than this are hard to view, although it is assumed that a few pieces lurk in private and museum collections, although I have no recollection of ever seeing one.

Quchan Kurd piled Balisht with Belouch colours and design

by Ed Stott – this article originally appeared in the Oriental Rug and Textile Society Newsletter

The Oriental Rug and Textile Society was founded in 1977 to encourage interest and enthusiasm in the carpets and textiles of the Orient, and now the whole world.

Members receive three Programmes and three Newsletters a year, with details of eleven events (lectures, visits and trips abroad) for each year.

Annual Membership Subscriptions: Individual £20 Household (2) £25 Student under 25 years £10

For Information and Membership contact Penny Berkut, 12 Mayfield Avenue, Southgate,

London N14 6DU Tel: 020 8886 3910 e-mail: penny@orientalrugandtextilesociety.org.uk www.orientalrugandtextilesociety.org.uk

Our Competition Winner

We have just announced the winner of the competition we started last November. Congratulations go to Mr Francis Plumbe of Bath who has won £1,000 worth of rugs which he is giving to his daughter for her London flat.

Francis Plumbe and daughter with Joy Pryor of Oriental Rugs of Bath

Both the rugs they chose were from the excellent Afghan Action range, thus helping sustain young weavers in Kabul.

the small rug in situ in Mr Plumbe's house

the large Afghan Action rug in situ in Mr Plumbe's house

21st Century Crowdfunding for a Centuries Old Trade

Crowdfunding is a 21st Century phenomenon that enables anyone (the crowd) to invest any amount from £10 to £10,000 in a business that is not listed on any stock exchange. In these days of financial constraint when banks pay as little as 1% or less on your savings, it makes enormous sense to risk some of your capital investing in a venture whose ethics and purpose you believe in, where your return could be in double figures. Crowdcube, one of the first platforms to enable crowdfunding, gives the people, the crowd, the means to empower businesses and organisations that they believe in, thus beginning to move the goalposts away from the bankers and vulture capitalists who’ve had such a hand in making capitalism synonymous with greed and greed alone. Crowdfunding brings a most welcome new dynamic to the centuries old practice of social venturing pioneered in the UK by the likes of the great Quaker industrialists Fry and Cadbury chocolate and Clarks shoes.

The rug trade is much older and has often been tainted with some of the more dubious practices of capitalism: child labour, exploitation of the weavers and so on. Oriental Rugs of Bath has always been careful to source its goods from reputable dealers to ensure its rugs have not involved child labour or any other exploitation. Last year we started a process of going as directly as possible to the weavers. Afghan Action was the first initiative – we get the rugs their trainees make in Kabul direct from them thereby supporting their work. And now we are teaming up with Jaipur Rugs Company whose key ethos is one of sustaining 30,000 rug weavers in their villages in six states of northern India. We’ll be posting a lot more about this exciting venture in the coming weeks.

We are raising £30,000 in our first round of crowd-funding through Crowdcube (we’re getting close to half way there with 3 weeks still to go) to support the marketing and technical development of our work with Afghan Action and Jaipur Rugs Company. It’s about releasing the financial and creative wealth that exists at the bottom of the pyramid for the mutual benefit of the weavers, the woven and you, the end customer. We have Enterprise Investment Scheme clearance which means you can write off up to 30% of your investment against tax and, as you will see on our Crowdcube page, if you invest over certain amounts you get tasty discounts on rugs.

Check out my little video on the investment: