Back to Activities
For more pictures- click on the photo |
|
Everything you wanted to know about carpets...
For the May Coffee Morning, members were invited by Rita Fariver to Mundo Alfombras, her shop at the end of calle Paris in Las Mercedes. Rita explained to us that different carpets such us Tabriz, Bidjar, Ghom, Turkoman, Bukhara, Naim, take the name of the city where they were woven. Although the most famous oriental carpets were Persian, today Pakistan, India and China are also producing beautiful handmade carpets. Connoisseurs spend lifetimes weighing which Oriental rugs are worthy of their collections. In the end it all comes down to personal taste. Most often, finely knotted or finely woven rugs are more desirable than those that are less fine. Also, rugs that are finely knotted have such dense surfaces that light is reflected from them in an attractive way. But it must be said that fine knotting alone does not make a rug good. A case may even be made that a fine weave simply is not appropriate in certain kinds of tribal rugs. Tribal and nomadic rugs often use a natural dye from plants and flowers, but modern rug makers use chemical dyes. Good rugs lie flat on their backs, without wrinkles or ripples along their edges. They have colors that resist fading in normal light and bleeding when exposed to water. Rugs in good condition are prized over those in bad. Some wool is better than others. Inferior wool is full of hair and is scratchy, dry, lusterless and incapable of properly absorbing dye. The oldest surviving carpet in the world is the exceptional PAZYRYK, from the 5th century BC. It was discovered in the Pazyryk burial mounds, at the Altai mountain region in Siberia. Ice is what preserved this rug for centuries. It is displayed nowadays at the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg. The best known of all Persian carpets is the ARDABIL carpet finished in 1539/40 AD. It was ordered by the Shah Tahmasp for the shrine of his ancestor and remained in use for 300 years. This carpet measures 39´long by 18´wide and is an extremely fine specimen. Today you can admire this work of art at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. We would like to thank Rita for her very interesting and informative talk on the history of rugs, advice on how best to care for them, and the opportunity to view the wide range of beautiful rugs in her store. For further information and a chance to see a wonderful selection of rugs for yourself, please contact Rita Farivar at Mundo Alfombras, Phone 992-0409 Website: http://www.mundoalfombras.com/
|