How to Look at an Antique Rug (Part 1)

PART ONE of TWO PARTS

By Jan David Winitz,
President & founder of Claremont Rug Company

One chooses to furnish their home with antique Oriental rugs for several reasons. They serve as durable, long-lasting floor coverings, adding comfort and warmth to the environment. Most importantly, they are handcrafted works of art, which provide unmatched beauty and grace. As with any art form, to truly appreciate antique carpets, one must learn how to look at them properly. “Educated viewing” is a valuable aid in choosing the rug that is certain to provide years of enjoyment.

In looking at antique rugs, one should strive to initially view them in the light of appreciation rather than of criticism. Each rug is unique, the product of highly skilled artisans who developed their physical dexterity and sense of artistic balance over many years. 

An almost incomprehensible amount of creative effort goes into the making of each rug. A finely-woven room-size carpet may have taken a group of weavers over a year to complete. Some oversize and palace-size carpets are the result of three or more years of effort by a team of up to 10 weavers working at a vertical loom while sitting on a scaffold many feet above the ground.

When looking at an antique rug, as when viewing a landscape, position yourself so that you can see the entire piece at a single glance. Notice what it is about the carpet that catches your attention first. What in its overall design and combination of colors engages you first? What are your eyes drawn to next?

Be sure to view the rug from two or more vantage points. As the carpet absorbs or reflects light differently from each new angle, you will be surprised to see that the colors take on strikingly varied hues and the design has a somewhat new appearance. The most striking differences emerge when the rug is compared from one end or the other, as the knots on an Oriental rug are cut at a consistent angle, so that light reflects off the surface from one end and is absorbed at the other.

After getting a general impression of the rug, now examine the field. Does it have the strong focal point of a dominant medallion on an open or sparsely patterned field or a diffuse medallion surrounded by dense ornamentation? Does the rug have a series of repeating or individually rendered medallions? Conversely, is the field filled with a spacious allover pattern of free-floating motifs, or a repeating, connected design?

The magic of the master weaver’s art lies in the ability to create unity in the rug as a whole, as well as in the relationship between individual details. Step forward to focus on its various patterns. Perhaps you see a tiny animal, the delicately drawn details in a series of flowers or triangular forms resembling mountains. Look at each detail in relation to the larger pattern of which it is a part. For instance, you can see that even a tiny cross in one corner of the field is harmonious in terms of shape, size, and location with the entire rug.

Virtually every Persian and tribal pile rug is composed of a series of borders that serve as a frame to its field. In the East, it is said that a rug’s borders simulate a window to the mysteries of the universe and that what we view in the field actually extends infinitely in each direction.

Take note of the rug’s main border and its narrower secondary borders and guard stripes. The inner and outer secondary borders may have the same design or be entirely dissimilar, yet in either case the weaver’s aim is to create a perfectly unified artistic balance of a panoply of elements.

Read Part Two: How to Look at an Antique Rug

Don’t miss my discussion of the effect of wool quality, the Persian and tribal weavers’ instinctive sense of color theory, and what can be learned by looking at the back of a rug.