Time Off: A Rug Dealer Vacations In Turkey

SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 15, 2011 – What does a rug dealer do when he goes on vacation in Turkey?

One thing is to reflexively cast an eye around the rug markets to see what's new.

So, when Tea and Carpets learned that San Francisco dealer Chris Wahlgren of Nomad Rugs had recently been to Istanbul and Konya, we asked him to share his impressions with us.

The biggest surprise?

After not visiting Turkey since 2004, he was amazed by how good things look. The European Union designated Istanbul as the European Capital of Culture in 2010 and the city spruced up its main historic districts for the occasion. They still shine.

As for Konya, that too has changed. Over the years it has turned from a sleepy town into a thriving city of over a million people.

Here is a picture of Konya with its famous Alâeddin Mosque, constructed in stages in the mid-12th and mid-13th centuries by the Seljuks.

All the changes are a measure of how much Turkey's economy keeps growing despite the big slump of recent years. And that, Wahlgren says, creates challenges for its rug sector.

As more manufacturing jobs open up, weavers are increasingly moving to factory jobs instead. They consider the factory jobs more prestigious and secure than handicrafts and the work often pays better.

To compete, rug producers have to increase salaries. But that drives their own production costs up, making it harder to compete with powerhouses like India and China where labor costs are low.

"I don't know how much longer we can count of Turkey to be a producer except on a small scale," Wahlgren observes. Already about half the stock in Istanbul's carpet shops is from Pakistan and Afghanistan because Turkish production is not large enough to meet demand.

Still, Turkey's carpet producers are famously resilient. And Wahlgren saw plenty of signs that they plan to stay in the game, particularly by innovating with new designs.

"Turkey has always been smart about re-imagining rugs," he says. That includes in recent decades pioneering the return of natural colors with the DOBAG project, introducing the world to patchwork kilims, and experimenting with patchwork rugs.

Here is a patchwork kilim available from Nomad Rugs in San Francisco

Today, the newest innovation is "overdyed" rugs, also known as "retro" rugs. They were first shown in the United States at the Domotex show in Atlanta last year but Wahlgren found so many in Turkish shops that it is clear producers are banking on them to become a new trend.

How an "overdyed" rug (shown here) is made is interesting.

"They take old Turkish village rugs that are not saleable due to their color or condition, then they bleach and wash them, and then overdye them in very brilliant colors, like bright blues, mauve, or purple," he says. "They are heavily distressed, with remnants of the original design showing through in the background."

These are rugs that are meant to be highly visible and so they probably go best with minimalist furnishing styles. Individual rug lovers may, or may not, like them. But from the producers' point of view, one can't help but admire their genius. They are the perfect solution to rising weaver costs.

"They can get an old village rug for a couple of hundred bucks, bleach and overdye it, and then sell it for a couple of thousand bucks if it’s room-sized," our visitor notes.

If that isn't clever marketing, what is? Wahlgren himself hasn't decided if he likes the rugs enough to stock them but he's keeping the door open. Without a doubt the rugs are intriguing – combining a modern look with a traditional design – and they could well be a fad for the next five years or so.

So, did Wahlgren, who says he spent 90 percent of his vacation time in Turkey vacationing, bring anything home with him?

Like any visitor to Turkey -- on vacation or on business -- he did indeed.

For his shop, he ordered some mohair tulus with wool so fine it feels like silk, some natural dye kilims, some patchwork kilims, and some yastik-sized small rugs. About 30 to 40 pieces in all.

This picture is of a natural dye kilim from Konya, available from Nomad Rugs in San Francisco.

And he brought something home for himself, too.

"I received a beautiful kilim from Mehmet Uçar," he says "natural dyed with a deep saffron color." He doesn't need to add that a gift like that is something to treasure.

Mehmet Uçar, who works in the Konya region, has been called the "master of the natural-dyed Konya kelim" by Hali magazine and for years has been one of Wahlgren's close associates and suppliers.

That may seem like a lot of rugs to bring home from vacation. But being able to bring so many is precisely the fun of being in the rug business.

(The picture at the top of the page is of a weaver in Konya.)

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Tribal Rugs: How The 1960s Changed The West’s Taste In Oriental Carpets

PRAGUE, July 18, 2008 – In the mid-1960s and into the mid-1970s, hundreds of thousands of young Europeans and Americans traveled East – to Morocco and Turkey or, much farther, to Iran, Afghanistan, India, and Nepal.

To the East, as in this verse from ‘Marrakesh Express:”

“Take the train from Casablanca going south
Blowing smoke rings from the corners of my mouth
Colored cottons hang in the air
Charming cobras in the square
Striped djellebas we can wear at home …”

The sudden longing for places with strong colors, tribal designs, and mysticism had an enormous influence on Western taste in oriental carpets. But before considering how much, it is time for the story of ‘Mercedes’ Werner.

Werner, his first name, is a retired German antiques dealer who divides his time today between Wurzburg and Prague. But even a few minutes after meeting him, it becomes clear he considers his spiritual home to be Turkey.

It began in the 1960’s, when he flew to Istanbul for a short vacation. He fell in love with the city and quickly realized he would need a car if he wanted to explore the country. So he flew back to Wurzburg for his old Mercedes and then began regularly driving 20 to 24 hours non-stop from Germany to Turkey.

To pay for his trips, he carried back Turkish rugs, artifacts and, because it was so easy to give the Turkish border guards 5 DM, even antiquities. But the story he likes to tell most is not business related. It is about a roadside village near Lake Van, which had nothing to offer except scenery.

Werner stopped so often at this village that he became very attached to it. He exchanged stories with the people at his favorite restaurant, became friends with the owner, and learned all about the local music. Then, for many years, he stopped going there as business took him elsewhere.

One day, when he was already middle-aged, Werner was home watching a documentary about eastern Turkey. Suddenly he heard the same village music he knew so well and there on the screen was the restaurant owner being asked if tourists ever came to such a remote area.

“No,” said the restaurant owner, “they only go to the seaside resorts.” And he added, “It’s not like 30 years ago when people came here just to see our mountains and learn about how we live.”

“What kind of people were those?” the interviewer asked in surprise.

“Well, like Mercedes Werner,” the restaurant owner said.

Werner says that when heard that he broke down in tears. He didn't know he had this affectionate nickname. And he had not realized how much his visits had been something extraordinary not only for himself but for his friends. The next year he returned to the village and revived what he now sees as a very important part of his life.

Interestingly, there were lots of Werners who came out of the adventures of the 1960s and 70s. Dennis Dodds, the head of the ICOC (International Conference on Carpets), says many current rug dealers got their start just that way. The rugs they discovered on their travels did much to shift their generation’s taste toward village and tribal designs and away from the elaborate city rugs favored by their parents.

In Istanbul, the travelers – including Dodds – gathered at the Pudding Shop, where they exchanged information and contacts for trips across Turkey and on to India. The café’s owner was said to be so helpful that he once gave a chair to a customer to sit on for the journey to Kathmandu. That was when all the usual seats in the minibus were full.

Dodds says that because the travelers were on a low budget and keen to get in touch with nature and natural lifestyles, they were attracted by affordable village and tribal pieces rather than by Ottoman, Safavid, or Mughal-derived designs. The geometric patterns of the rugs they brought home to Europe and America fit nicely with the 1960s fashion of Op Art and they soon became the new market standard.

What weavings most owe their success to these years? Probably kilims. They suddenly became hugely popular, in part because they are so boldly graphic – offering just colors and patterns. By contrast, pile carpets add a third dimension - texture - which diminishes the clarity of the design.

The 1960s and 70s are long gone, along with long hair and long, strange trips. But it is interesting to realize that the aesthetic tastes the travelers helped set for rugs are still very current, and probably will remain so until the next great shift in Western pop culture.

(Kilims pictured here are from: Turkish Culture)

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Related Links

Barry O’Connell: Turkish Rugs and Carpets

Barry O’Connell: Guide To Turkish Rug and Carpet Books

The Pudding Shop

Wikipedia: The Asia Overland Hippie Trail

Touring The Hippie Trail Today

YouTube: Afghanistan On The Hippie Trail 1967

YouTube: London To Kathmandu Overland

YouTube: Les Annees Hippies au Maroc (Part 1)

YouTube: Les Annees Hippies au Maroc (Part 2)

A Rare Oushak Carpet In A Czech Castle Catches The Rug World’s Eye

PRAGUE, March 14, 2008 – The Czech Republic’s economic rebound has brought more than the restoration of historic buildings whose beauty was long hidden under sooty and cracking plaster.

It also has seen an upsurge of interest in the country’s many art treasures, including – for oriental carpet lovers – the valuable rugs held in state and private collections.

One of these treasures can be seen in the most recent edition (Winter 2007) of ‘Hali,’ the leading international magazine covering the world of carpets, textiles and Islamic art. The carpet, an Ottoman from the second half of the 16th century, is the oldest one in the Czech Republic and its magazine debut marks the first time it can widely be seen in color.

The historic carpet hangs in a castle in the south of the country that is associated with the wealthy Schwarzenberg family. It was woven in the Turkish city of Oushak, famous in Ottoman times for its fine rugs.

The Schwarzenberg piece is one of the renown “white oushaks,” which were named for their white background and were much prized in renaissance Europe. This one is decorated with mysterious symbols known as “chintamani” that appear as triangles of dots above two wavy lines. The Turkic symbols are believed to harken back to Buddhist times in Central Asia.

The appearance of the carpet in ‘Hali’ is the latest sign of a revival of interest both outside and inside the Czech Republic in the country’s rug collections.

The same carpet, which rarely leaves Hluboka Castle, also recently appeared in a major domestic exhibition of pieces held by Czech museums and private collectors. The exhibit in Brno this winter followed similar showings in Prague and Plzen that have drawn sizeable crowds over the past few years.

The visitors to the exhibits are curious to rediscover oriental carpets after they have been an almost forgotten item in Czech households for many decades. How they became so forgotten is a curious tale from the communist era, when many traditional status symbols were turned upside down.

Miroslav Jungr tells the story in his 2005 book “Oriental Carpets,” itself the first Czech-language collectors’ handbook to be published since before World War II. Born in 1942, he writes from personal experience.

Jungr notes that until World War II, oriental carpets were a standard part of any successful family’s décor in a society that maintained the values of turn-of-the-century Europe.

“My grandmother, who had four daughters, bought oriental carpets as part of the dowries that they would take into their marriages,” he recalls. The carpets came from a selection of high-quality carpet shops in Prague which at the time did good business.

But with the communist coup in 1948, oriental carpets were branded capitalist luxuries. The retail shops disappeared and were replaced by something unique to the communist era: state-owned antiquity shops.

The “Antikva” shops were always full of rugs, porcelain, and other collectibles. The stock came from formerly successful families which had to sell their valuables to pay a “millionaire’s tax” that was passed just before the communists seized power and nationalized most private property. With no businesses or other such holdings to liquidate to pay the tax, there was nothing for these families to do but liquidate their personal possessions at the antique shops.

In effect the antique stores were pawn shops and their purpose was to earn hard currency for the party. Their staffs were usually the wives of party officials and they sold only to foreign diplomats and touring groups.

The effect on Eastern Europe’s heirlooms was like that of a vacuum cleaner moving them West at absurdly low prices. Jungr says the shop staffs often had only the crudest ideas of the collectibles’ value and priced them to sell quickly.

As oriental carpets were devalued in communist Czechoslovakia, they were replaced as status symbols by what was truly hard to get: modern Western-grade home furnishings.

Most in demand was plain wall-to-wall carpeting. Such carpeting was produced domestically by the long-famous commercial carpet factories in northern Bohemia. But the product was almost entirely destined for export.

Jungr says that people, including himself, would go to any lengths to find a friend-of-a-friend who had some contact with the factories or with the rare state shop stocking their goods. A bribe was absolutely necessary to bring home the prize.

In his apartment in Prague, Jungr still has one room covered in white wall-to-wall from that era. It represents a trophy hard to give up even now. The choice for those who didn’t go to such lengths was shabby wall-to-wall carpeting produced for the socialist and third world markets in gaudy patterns.

Today, oriental carpets cost in Prague about what they cost anywhere else in Europe. A number of mid-range shops do consistent business but an early attempt at a higher-end collectors’ shop failed after several years due to lack of buyers.

That raises a question for Jungr and other rug enthusiasts in the country. Is the loss of habit for oriental carpets in home furnishings permanent, especially given today’s global trend toward minimalist decors?

Or, will the rediscovery of the lost family heirlooms – now so frequently on exhibit -- rekindle interest?

It is a question only time, and fashion, will answer.

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Turkish Carpets and Showmanship Go Hand-in-Hand in Anatolia

ISTANBUL, March 8, 2008 -- In Istanbul, the saying goes, you will see the world.

But if you are speaking about the carpet business -- and how showrooms use every idea imaginable to sell to tour groups – the phrase could cover Kusadasi, Cappadocia, and many other places in Turkey as well.

Some tourists say the way Turkish carpets and kilims are sold is too aggressive. Some say it is highly entertaining. But just about everyone agrees it is unforgettable.

Perhaps that is why there are so many videos on the Internet about buying rugs in Turkey.

The videos range from very low-quality recordings to highly professional documentaries. What they have in common is a fascination with how Turkey's carpet sellers manage to make buying a rug almost a requirement for anyone visiting the country.

A Japanese blogger nicknamed Shinjushinju has put a video on YouTube called "Turkish Flying Carpets.” It offers a glimpse of how some showrooms are combining carpets with cabaret to create a rapport with tour groups:



The video shows the carpet sellers working up the crowd's appetite by spinning carpets over their heads. The effect is a bit like pizza-makers spinning dough into the air in Italian restaurants – only more novel.

Often, the showrooms offer other bits of entertainment as well. One is to pretend that there really is a “flying” carpet in the seller’s collection and to coax a member of the tour group to sit on it.

The willing participant is blindfolded and there are magical incantations from the showmen. Does the carpet rise in the air? No, until four strong salesmen each grab a corner and lift it up – with the carpet rider on top.

But what seems to most fascinate Japanese and European visitors is the show that still remains at the heart of any stop in a carpet shop – haggling over prices.

Journeyman Pictures, a London distributor of short documentaries, has put a video on YouTube called "The Carpet Sellers – Turkey." (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2F34Btbq1qc). It looks at the haggling process from both sides – buyer’s and seller’s.

One carpet salesman in the film says he adjusts his strategy according to the provenance of the customer. In the mass tour business, that seems to be more important in determining prices than the provenance of a carpet.

The toughest Western customers, he says, are Australians. Unlike most Americans and Europeans, they are prepared to put a seller through a long examination of his merchandise and of the art of carpets in general. These buyers want to be educated consumers, even if it requires drinking oceans of apple tea to do it.

Do people generally feel they get their money’s worth when they buy in Turkey? The answer varies with the individual.

Some people in tour groups complain that the carpet business is so strong that it interferes with their sightseeing. Tour guides sometimes cut short visits to historic sites like Ephesus in order to deliver their groups more quickly to salesmen.

Other people find that when they buy a carpet in Turkey, the carpet business follows them home – literally. That can happen when customers choose to have a large carpet shipped to their home countries rather than carry it themselves.

The carpet will be delivered but their name and address may also be passed on to itinerant rug sellers, for example, in America, who will phone them at home months later.

“Do you remember my uncle who sold you a carpet in Istanbul?” the voice may ask. If the buying experience in Turkey was positive – and often the past looks rosiest from a distance – the call may lead to a door-to-door visit.

And then, in the surprising setting of one’s own home, the unforgettable experience of buying a carpet in Turkey may begin all over again.

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Related Links

Barry O’Connell: A Guide To Turkish Rugs

Barry O’Connell: A Guide To Turkish Prayer Rugs

Jozan: Articles On Turkish Rugs