A Carpet Of Stone Honors Hamburg As Heart Of Europe's Oriental Rug Trade

HAMBURG, April 11, 2008 -- When people think of oriental carpets, they usually don’t think of Germany’s biggest port.

But Hamburg is the major entry point for handwoven carpets into Europe and for trans-shipments to America. One third of the world’s carpets move through here each year, along with many more goods from the East ranging from tea to coffee to computers.

For decades, this was best known only to cognoscenti of the carpet trade. But in recent years, enthusiasts have tried to put Hamburg more openly on the rug map. They have succeeded so well that today anyone visiting Hamburg’s port area can learn a lot about the global carpet business, too.

The place to begin is the port’s storehouse area, a sprawling complex of warehouses built along a maze of canals at the turn of the last century. Called the Speicherstadt (Storehouse City), the district is popular with tour boats which carry visitors up the canals to admire the red-brick architecture of the buildings. But the warehouses themselves, despite their yesteryear gables and turrets, are very much a still-functioning depot area.

In the heart of the warehouse complex is a bridge covered with an oriental carpet. There is a sign at each end that warns any ladies who happen to be walking by in high heels to be careful. The reason is not that they might damage the surface of the carpet, but so that they don’t trip on it.


The carpet is made of stone and is the brainchild of German artist Frank Raendchen. He mobilized scores of sculptors, illustrators, students and photographers in 2004 to join him in sticking 1.5 tons of colored stone to the bridge with synthetic resin to reproduce the design of a Persian carpet.

What are the stone carpet’s dimensions? Length: 37.5 meters. Width: 2.45 meters. “Pile” height: 1 centimeter. It is modeled on a real carpet that Raendchen rented for the project for 70 euros from a dealer.

Raendchen says his goal was to turn the warehouse area “inside-out” to show visitors the exotic things stored inside. He says he focused on carpets because “the oriental rug, besides its economic importance and its decorative value, still possesses some of the magical allure of the great wide world.”

The oriental carpet made of stone is not the only way to appreciate the some 3.6 million square meters worth of handwoven rugs that flood in and out of Speicherstadt each year. There are also several museums that tell the story of the port and its exotic trade.

Among these are the Speicherstadtmuseum, with its hands-on exhibits of bales of rubber and coffee sacks, and the Spice Museum, where visitors can see and smell some 50 spices. Both of them are located in original warehouses.

And there is also one very unexpected museum, squeezed between the Spice Museum and a carpet warehouse. It is the Afghan Museum, with displays of rugs and other artifacts. An Afghan carpet salesman founded it in 1998 to remind himself and other Afghans living in Germany of their homeland. Today, it helps to make ends meet by doubling as a venue for catered parties.

But perhaps the most fascinating thing a carpet lover can see in this sprawling warehouse town is history repeating itself – over and over again.

Despite all the modernization, the warehouse crews still use pulleys to haul pallets of carpets off barges and up to the warehouse windows many stories above the waterline. There the carpets will stay until they are sold to retailers around the Western world, and more rugs arrive to take their place.

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Frank Raendchen's Stone Carpet

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Oriental Carpet Books Sell In Strange Ways

LONDON, March 21, 2008 -- Books about rugs may seem like a no-surprise part of the Oriental Carpet trade. But when it comes to how the books are sold, the business is very much a world of its own.

There may be thousands of carpet retailers spread across the globe. Yet there is only a handful of dealers who specialize in rug books and stock enough of a variety to interest collectors.

One of those retailers is Ed Stott, who operates Oxianna Books from his home base near London. Indeed, his base is his home because, as for most of the specialist booksellers, the business does not generate enough profit to warrant shop space.

Stott says ‘the bread and butter’ of the trade are specialty books for connoisseurs.

“People who have just spent serious money for a carpet, rug, or bagface will want to buy the book if the piece is published, if only to show friends,” he says.

After all, a book full of rare rugs including something similar to one’s own goes a long way toward authenticating a piece to any doubters in the crowd. And perhaps it can even help ease relatives’ shock over a rug’s sticker price.

One of the most highly sought-after books among collectors is the catalogue for an exhibition of Turkmen weavings held at the Textile Museum in Washington, D.C in 1980. The catalogue, ‘Turkmen’ by J. Thompson and L. Mackey, has sold an estimated 5,000 copies, something Stott believes is a record for a specialist book.

Some other books -- like rare rugs themselves -- appreciate in value over time. One is ‘Rugs of the Peasants and Nomads of Anatolia’ by W. Bruggemann and H. Bohmer. It was originally published in 1983 with just 500 copies in German and 500 copies in English at the price of 60 British pounds a copy. Today, Stott says, a first-edition copy is fetching 400 pounds.

But if collectors are ready to pay high prices for specialist books, they appear to have mixed emotions about another source of information on rugs: auction catelogues.

Stott says a few auction catelogues are highly sought after because they are the stock of a single collector or dealer and may offer more information than appears in general-audience carpet books.

But most catelogues are considered to have only modest value because the pictures are post-card sized and, Stott says, the digital process can enhance the colors. After all, the intention of the catalogues is to sell carpets in auctions and advertising is advertising.

The world of carpet books is still a new one, with the earliest dating back only to around the 1900s. Stott says there were a few early German authors at that time but that it was really not until after World War II that books started to appear regularly.

At first, authors tended to be academic in their writing. But by the 1970s they also began aiming at more general readers. One of the pioneers was ‘Woven Gardens, Nomad and Village Rugs of the Fars Province of Southern Persia,’ by D. Black and J. Loveless. It caught, and expanded, the wave of interest in nomadic and village carpets at the time.

How does someone get into the business of dealing in specialist rug books?

In Stott's case, it was quite by accident. Ten years ago, his job as computer expert at British Gas was made redundant. But opportunity presented itself in the form of a friend who was going through a divorce and needed to dispose of a whole collection of books about carpets, travel, and related subjects.

Stott combined the collection with the rise of e-commerce and his mail-order Oxianna Books was born.

But it is not an easy business to be in, particularly today.

As a dealer based in Europe, Oxianna is hard-hit by the exchange rate when it does business with American customers. The weak dollar has made merchandise priced in British pounds or euros more expensive than before.

And compared to a few years ago -- when many new carpets books were published – today’s trend is toward fewer and ever pricier tomes. That is because color reproduction of photographs is very costly -- so much so that publishing a top-quality book now often requires having a carpet club or other sponsor subsidize the project.

Perhaps that is why many specialist bookstore owners engage in their business only part-time and without giving up other professions they may have. The business has to be as much for the love of carpets as for the hope of rewards.

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