| rjhowe@erols.com
Dear folks - This is a story illustrating how easily serious
misunderstandings can occur in the rug world. When I had literally just
begun collecting Turkmen I happened on to a dealer at a distance who was
truly knowledgeable, helpful and who had very good, reasonably priced
material. When my wife and I first visited his shop, he treated us
graciously, showed us some very nice pieces and recommended, soundly,
three of the major books, those interested in Turkmen weavings should
read. There was mention in this initial conversation that one could expect
to make some mistakes early on and that the costs of them should be seen
as a kind of "tuition." A week or so after returning home from visiting
him, I called him and bought a Turkmen chuval (asymmetrical knots) that he
had shown us. Now there was an immediate problem to solve since this bag
had a bare area or two. The dealer had told us that he had felt for some
time that this bag was deserving of repair but had just not done it yet. I
asked whether he would arrange to have a quality repair job done, he said
yes and we agreed on a price for the repair. He mentioned that he had an
out-of-town reweaver in mind (he is "so Tekke" the dealer said). I sent a
check up front. In a subsequent phone conversation I asked how the piece
was coming and he confided that he had sent to piece to another weaver,
someone he had just begun to use but who had done very good work in his
first couple of jobs. The dealer further said that in his experience
reweavers did their best work early in a work relationship and tended to
tail off after awhile. The change of repairer was a small red flag for me,
since he had touted the "Tekke" so strongly but I didn't protest. A few
days later, I got a note from him advising me not to worry about the
change of repair person. "I have enough experience here for both of us,"
was his phrase. A couple of weeks later he called saying the piece was
ready. "I should tell you," he said, "that this piece has some symmetrical
knots in it." Now I knew nothing about rugs but I am an inveterate
graduate student type. So by the time he said this sentence I had not only
bought Macke/Thompson, Loges and Eilands' "Comprehensive Guide," as he had
recommended, I had read each of them several times. Armed only with this
reading I said, "That's not a problem if the symmetrical knots are at the
sides." There was a noticable silence on the phone at the other end but we
completed our conversation without further mishap and the piece eventually
arrived. Now I was a little concerned about what the change of reweavers
might have meant (I read it that he found a way to make a little more
money on the job, but wasn't particularly disturbed by that alone). But
the indication about Turkish knots and the silence in the last phone call
worried me. So I took the repiled piece to a local dealer who does lots of
repairs and paid him to write me an evaluation of this repiling job. He
did so, indicating that not only was the repair done in symmetrical knots
throughout, but that, in addition, the rug had not been saddle stitched at
the bottom (a very inexpensive procedure) and so was exposed to loss of
material there. I contacted the dealer from whom I'd purchased the bag and
who had supervised the repair and advised him that I had this written
assessment, and asked what we could do to rectify things. He said there
was no point in asking the repair person to redo the job. "There's no
getting blood out of a turnip." (It could well be that this repair person
could only repair using a symmetric knot.) We discussed it further and at
one point he offered to buy the piece back from me for what I had in it.
But I liked the piece; just wanted it repaired properly. Finally, he said,
"What do you want me to do?" I said that I wanted for him either to
arrange to have the repair done properly or to refund the money I had paid
for the repair. He said, "If I do that I'll be out a couple of hundred
dollars on the deal." I didn't respond and he finally agreed to do send me
a check for the repair fee and did. (Someone told me later that the fact
that I got a rug repair fee successfully refunded is itself deserving of
at least a short article in Hali. Likely a rare event in history.) I then
paid to have the old repair removed and to have the piece repaired using
asymmetric knots. It cost me all of the refunded repair price plus about
$200 in addition. I also wrote the dealer who had sold me and originally
repiled the piece, thanking him for seeing his way to making this deal
right. I added that I hoped that this unfortunate experience in our first
dealing would not prevent him from occasionally drawing an interesting
Turkman piece to my attention, since, as he had pointed out himself,
expenses associated with mistakes are probably best seen as a kind of
tuition. I have been unable to deal with him further. I have thought about
this transaction a lot. I think what may have occurred is that two
basically honest, well-meaning people, each playing by a particular set of
rules, both came to feel at the end that they had been taken advantage of.
I felt I had behaved openly and equitably in terms of the agreements I had
made and the assurances I had been given. I think he may feel that my
sentence indicating that I knew that symmetric knots should only be at the
sides of a rug with asymmetric knots, indicated that I had posed as a
novice but was likely far more knowledgeable and therefore a kind of
sharpy from the start. And looking at his situation when he had received
the completed repair job and found that it had been done with Turkish
knots: how was he to know how serious a collector I am or whether,
regardless of that question, this was something that would concern me at a
level that would obligate him to share it openly with me? More, I think he
felt that he had basically gone as far as he was obligated to go at the
point that he offered to buy the piece as repaired back from me. I, on the
other hand, felt this offer was entirely inadequate since it did not honor
either the original purchase agreement or the repair agreement, especially
in the face of his assurances, when I expressed concern about the change
of weavers. I tell this story in fairly tedious detail because it
illustrates for me how easy it is to get cross-wise in the world of our
interest. How many knowledgeable rug people do you know who don't speak to
one another and what is lost to all of us in such lacunae? How often to
both parties to such a difference feel justifiably wronged? It challenges
us to be careful and patient with one another. I'd still like a
relationship with the dealer that sold me the very nice piece discussed
here. I just don't know how now to go about it. Regards, R. John
Howe |