Posted by Steve Price on March 05, 1999 at 07:11:40:
In Reply to: Rugs Smell posted by Erol Abit on March 05, 1999 at 06:28:01:
Dear Erol,
Actually, I have bought a few pieces on internet auctions, but I do so with much more caution than when dealing with someone I've met. So far the results have been good, but that doesn't change the fact that the web (especially web auctions) is hazardous territory for buyers.
As for the smells of rugs, I never noticed anything particularly interesting about them. Your mentioning this is particularly striking to me, as my research career has been mostly involved with how taste and smell receptors work, so the general subject of smell is of more than passing interest to me. Odors can have very powerful emotional content, although probably not nearly as much as some of my more intellectually exuberant colleagues believe. In any case, rug aroma seems very unlikely to become accessible on the web. Obviously, we have no technology for transmitting odors, and our vocabulary for describing them is very primitive. We are, after all, animals that live in a visual world. Lest you think this is trivial, consider that the vast majority of critters live in a world of odors, with vision being secondary. More about that some other time.
Regards,
Steve Price