Agreeable Hodgepodge

Hi all,

A clipper ship captain might be proud - there's nothing quite like like the combination of eclectic taste and available wallspace. Pat won't get any new phobias here:








The Turkotorium:



Apparently, Bakhtiari tents have incredibly long hallways:



An empty door is a sad thing. So:




My old friend. We go way back together:



My favorite manner of bedroom corner clutter:



The reds in the Uzbek block print are darker, but the Baluchi bag required some brightening to be visible:

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Chuck Wagner

Hey Chuck,

A very eclectic array. I'm impressed.

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Rich Larkin

Waaaah. Answer my questions.

Jerry,

1. What are our attitudes toward placing rare rugs in locations where they will receive wear?

Sometimes, pieces are just too big for a wall and too pleasing to put in a closet. So, they go on the floor. Our neighbors are getting used to taking their shoes off when they visit. That said, the cruelest thing about a New England winter may just be what happens to the rugs in the entryway, so a little prudence is in order. For those lucky few of you who have megabucks rugs, well, you'll get more sympathy from me right after I own one. Email provided to willing donors.

2. Do the colors and patterns of oriental rugs and textiles make it difficult to use them to decorate a room?

No.

3. Is too much ever too much?

It depends on who is doing the looking. An interior designer might have a cow looking at our place, but then, we couldn't care less. We (the global "we") collect this stuff because we like it; very few collectors I know are in it for the money. Those that are, are dealers 24 hours a day, who happen to like rugs too.

The rest of us like to look at textiles, a little or a lot isn't a big deal to someone who is trying to broaden their own knowledge, or just appreciate someone elses taste in textiles.

Certain pieces need some space around them, and some others dominate the space they are in. So, a little discretion is a good thing. It is certainly possible to overwhelm the eye.

4. Do your friends and neighbors think that you’re nuts? (…with regard to your use of rugs – not for other possible reasons)

No. Most of them feel like it's a trip to a museum, without the entry fee.

Regards,
Chuck

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Chuck Wagner

Novel Approach

Chuck,

The first two photos appear to have windows, on the left sides, but instead of outdoors, it looks like more living space on the other side of the windows. It is not a reflection because the stuff on the other side is not a mirror image of what is on this side.
The typical purpose for inner windows is a sun room. Perhaps that is what I am seeing.
Or you have designed your house like a museum, where you walk down the hall and instead of walls, you put large windows in so people can see into the other rooms.
I think I will try that, too. People can then see the mess in the teenager's room. Kind of like a real-life diorama of a modern, messy kid's room.
And I haven't tried putting things on doors or around windows yet like you have. If I tried that, I might find something tied around my own neck....


Patrick Weiler

Hi Pat,

Yes, we have an interior atrium that provides lots of light and extra walls for bags & smaller pieces. Some of the smaller antiques are in there. We change out the floor (and larger wall) rugs as our tastes migrate. Hang with some Afghanis for a while and you'll start seeing stuff show up around your doors & windows. Chazm-i-badduor, yumn- good juju- that sort of thing...

Regads,
Chuck

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Chuck Wagner

Now you've done it!

Chuck,

I suppose the inevitable has occurred. Someone actually wants to see a little bit more of one of the pieces we have shown.
Even though Richard has stated:

"I suggest as delicately as possible, squeezing a runner measuring 4' 4" into a hallway 4' 6' wide creates a sense of claustrophobia, and the appreciation of the rug suffers."

Sometimes we need to fit what we own into the space we have. One of my hall runners has maybe 1/2" of space on either side. Since "the appreciation of the rug" would be difficult to improve regardless of the placement, I am not too worried about how it "fits". It is very hard to find the perfect hall runner, because many of our western halls were not the place these eastern "runners" were made for.
I do not expect that the Bakhtiari weaver of your hallway piece anticipated its current location.
Can you show us some more photos of that piece? It may fit my hall better than it fits in yours...

Patrick Weiler

Hi Pat and Chuck,

Actually, there are several rugs Jerry has turned up in this endeavor that I'd like to hear more about, including the mentioned Bakhtiari runner. If we see more on the runner, I'd be interested in any comments that distinguish between (among?) the products of a definable Bakhtiari ethnic/tribal element, as contrasted with the both small and large sized rugs from the Chahar Mahal district customarily called "Bakhtiari" in the marketplace. The latter tend to be single wefted on cotton foundations. A lot of it is mediocre commercial goods, but some examples, including large carpets, can be very impressive. However, they are quite different from stuff like Chuck's runnner, which looks to me to be much more like South Persian tribal production, resembling the work of Lurs and other groups. It has always seemed to me that for a group with apparently large numbers population-wise, the real Bakhtiari aren't heard from that much as rug producers.

I won't say another word about squeezing runners into hallways.

Hi Rich,

The difference you discuss is summarized by: "nomadic vs. settled" Bakhtiari. Some of the other Tekkers have more knowledge of this topic than I; hopefully they'll chime in sometime.

In the mean time I'll run with it and start with a couple of closeup images pinched from an archived chat; also, I'll send a couple other images to Steve over the next day or two.

Here's a closeup of the front, symmetrical knots (also found in Chahar Mahal style pieces):



And then, the back. Very different. No blue-gray cotton. Multiple brown wefts (as I recall, Jim Opie had a Bakhtiari writeup in one of his books and said there are usually three, as seen here), wool warps, and often, doubled yarn in the pile knots..



A more distant shot of the back, to help appreciate the general appearance:



Regards,
Chuck

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Chuck Wagner

Thanks, Chuck. Solid info on the type you've pictured. I have a pretty good handle on the single wefted kind. I think Edwards suggests those were named in large part because they were woven for settled Bakhtiaris, rather than by them.

Wish I could get my images up as efficiently as you do it.

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Rich Larkin

Too Good

Chuck,

Your rug is too good for the floor. I think you should staple it to the ceiling.


Patrick Weiler

agreeing with an agreeable hodgepodge

Hello all, this is my first post, so I feel a bit clumsy. But, anyway, I want to address the four questions and maybe post some pictures of our apartment (assuming I get around to taking some in a timely manner) on that other thread.
1. The rugs we put on the floor are either brand new or are so threadbare that there is no point in trying to preserve them. That said, if we have enough open expanse of floor -- which we presently don't -- we sometimes put new ones on top of the threadbare spots on our big, old rugs.
We have very few rugs that are of the quality or age to merit special treatment. In the past, I foolishly let them endure some wear and I still kick myself to think of the abuse they took. Now, our three or four rugs of any value are draped in layers over a banister, with a chunky towel under the bottom-most rug. They've been folded so that a bit of each shows. The uppermost rug at present is from a Persian urban workshop (little sister to one that my in-laws sent to the rug cleaner, and never came back). Usually our featured rug is a beautiful and somewhat fragile Baluch, of the so-called Timuri sort. One of my husband's great-grandparents brought it home from a trip to Istanbul in the 19th century.
2. The colors and patterns don't make decorating tough, because we don't so much decorate as we just constantly arrange and re-arrange things. We have off-white walls and off-white window coverings -- basically neutral. Unfortunately we don't have wood floors at present, but an off-white carpet whose worn and dirty patches are covered by numerous small rugs. Our overall taste seems to be for dark colored wood and textiles, so everything ends up looking all right.
3. I know that there is a limit to just about everything. But we haven't yet reached that point when it comes to books and rugs.
4. Not sure if the rugs are why people think we're sort of different -- if not outright nuts. We may be moving in that direction, however, as most of the rugs I've been buying for the past year have been war rugs -- which probably are anathema to some of you. But we like them for reasons I still can't fathom. It's not like we're into guns. We're basically dove-ish. I just like looking at them, just as I like looking at our other Baluch, Turkoman, and Caucasian pieces.

Chuck,

Stapling to the ceiling is an excellent idea. Just make sure it's the soft staples, so as not to hurt the rug, and above all, make sure it's a spacious ceiling so there is a nice frame around the rug to maximize the presentation. (That would be me.)

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Rich Larkin

Hi

To the person who posted as "unregistered": please send me your name so I can insert it into your post. It's much nicer for everyone to have an identity. And, if you would, next time you post, please overwrite the word "unregistered" in the user name field of the page with your name.

Thanks, and welcome to Turkotek.

Steve Price

Hi Rich, and High Pat,

Here are a couple more images of the runner:



There is a nice green in the inside border, and quite a few spots of natural brown in the botehs:



Cheers
,
Chuck Wagner

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Chuck Wagner

oops

I'm the unregistered person, who actually was registered, but managed not to post properly. Actually, I didn't even notice that I wasn't identified. Also, that is a lovely runner.

Hi Janet

Thanks. The reason the software didn't fill in your name automatically is that you weren't logged in. That's also the reason "Guest" appears under your name in the last post. We're fine with people posting as guests, but since you are registered, you can take advantage of the conveniences members get if you log in.

Regards, and thanks again

Steve Price

got it

Steve, thanks for helping me get up to speed. I think I'm doing everything properly now.

Negotiable Hodgepodge

Greetings - I am primarily a read-only Turkotekker but have enjoyed this salon, and this thread hits home- literally.
My wife indulges my new habit more patiently than I have a right to expect. She is not a collector of anything and doesn't like CLUTTER. She also believes that runners should actually not go up the walls of the hallway.
Here are some compromises we reached:
She gave me a dimension window ( no more than 2'4" wide, between 9&11 ft long) for the hall runner- If I could find one I really wanted that fit, would survive duty (barefoot at our house) and still allow us to pay the mortgage, then I could have an older weaving there.
It only took three years;


I obviously wanted a few things in the living room, so I let her pick from the stuff I have collected. It gets us talking about the pieces, and she changes them out periodically;

The proximity to the TV is actually not so bad - during commercials one need only hit the mute button and look upward.

Finally, I am allowed a small room of my own for musical instruments and textiles (It's actually the guest bedroom- sleeps 2 and smells like wool). Covering all surfaces with weavings really takes the edge off of an amplified guitar. Please note this is an older photo and I no longer hang rugs from curtain rods. Am working on eliminating the push pins.


regards to all
d.k.

What Conveniences?

Steve,

How did this line of yours get past the censors?

"you can take advantage of the conveniences members get if you log in"

I hardly ever get the frequent flyer miles, door prizes, cash rebates and rental car discounts.



Chuck, I like the variety of patterns in your hallway runner. With the varied warp colors and other details, I would be more likely to say it is Luri than Bakhtiari. And the Luri had longer tent hallways than the Bakhtiari.

Doug,

First of all, I think I need to take up playing the guitar. And your second photo, of the living room, needs to have a rug showing on the television.
And that hallway kilim looks practically anemically narrow. (Compared to Chucks and mine.) I will send a photo of mine for reference.
Eliminating the push pins would be nice. I think you should glue huge magnets to the wall and then put opposite-polarity magnets onto the rugs. That ought to do it. No damage to the rugs, either. Except the black wool mordanted with iron filings.....

Helpfully,

Patrick Weiler

Doug,

Packing the room with rugs for acoustical reasons. Fantastic. A man with a future in rug collectiion and decoration.

Whatever you do, don't let the spouse find out that the slit tapestry format is much too light and insubstantial to serve on a floor in a hallway. Somebody will get killed, and that tends to upset the household even more than clutter.

BTW, I remember back in the day, when I also felt the need to justify acquisitions with practical domestic reasons, I used to rejoice at finding a decent runner under, say, 3' 4" wide. Back then, I lacked the wit to come up with the acoustical rationale. May you and your collection prosper.

Hi Patrick,

If you're right about the Luri weaving that runner (I don't doubt it), then what did those Bakhtiari weave, anyway?

Hi Pat

The conveniences to being a member and logged in are worth every penny we charge. They let you subscribe to a thread so you get email notification of every new post (just what you need, more email), have the forum show the times as though all posts were made in your time zone, see icons showing new posts since your last visit. And, when the software is behaving, to post without going through the moderator queue for approval.

Probably some other things, too, but what could compare to the ones I mentioned?

Steve Price

This One Definitely Belongs On The Floor

Here is a hallway runner that fits the Chuck decorating philosophy rather than the Doug tradition. Yes, there is actually a half-inch of clearance on either side. If you ever spent any time looking for runners, they are usually even wider than this one, and shorter too. This one is 14' long and 34" wide. It has orange warps tied into triangles at one end and a flat 2" kilim weave at the other end. The double wefts are dark brown and it has a staggering 4x4 knots per square inch for a 16 kpsi average - it is so few knots you wonder how the rug holds itself together.
It is in a hallway that is 36" wide and 19' long. The warm wool is nice on a cool day and it certainly livens up an otherwise plain surface.



The mask on the wall is Moroccan. It is not really a mask in that it was not made to wear. It is more a sculpture of a face - and a not very attractive one.

Here is a closer view of one end of this unusual piece:



If you know what it is, please tell us. I do not have a clue. The colors are gloriously synthetic, the drawing is crude, it is not entirely straight, has a pucker or two halfway across near the middle and can light up the hallway even with the lights off. It does not look quite like anything else I am familiar with, so it is probably a very valuable and rare original and unique art-historical masterpiece. Very valuable.


Doug, your runner looks like it may have been half of a wider piece. Compared to mine and Chuck's, yours looks like a shriveled up piece of bacon in a very large pan. It looks south/west Anatolian. Do you know where it was made?

Patrick Weiler

Hold the bacon!

Hi Patrick,

Oh yeah, well yours looks like a big piece of Canadian bacon! [Pretend there those little dueling johnnies here, which I can't muster up.]

Just kidding. I had to stand up for Chuck's interior design instincts, fully in the true spirit of the thread. Your 16 kps runner gives me a sense of South Persian, but you are my SP go to person, and you have the rug right there. I say so because I used to have a runner with what I think had a similar look and feel, both as to design (strung out diamonds surrounded by jagged outlines, with the usual suspects as filler), wool (very good, and glossy), and color (mine didn't have all those synthetics, but it did have an orange and an amber that had bled throughout the rug, giving it an amazingly nice warm look). A big difference, however, was the selvages. Mine had the familiar one cord intertwining of two colors (in that case, the orange and the indigo). The big "good" color on mine was a terrific indigo, so the overall effect was a fairly warm, mellow orange on deep blue.

If the rug I've described was related to ypurs, I'd say it was as an earlier transitional piece. I acquired mine in Saudi Arabia in the mid sixties, and I'd figure it was about 30 years old (it qwas dated so). What do you think, South Persian?

shriveled?

Gosh Patrick- I'll have you know that the runner is a full 23" wide and lays perfectly flat! (and without use of a bacon stretcher)
It is indeed a south-central Anatolian slit tapestry from around 1900. Great colors and holding together very well. Could be a segment of a larger piece. It has (for me) the important ability to look better every time I study it, and I am now very grateful that my wife would not accept the coarsely woven 34" wide Pakistani made Caucasian pattern that I am still trying to put somewhere...
Regarding your magnetic wall suggestion- I was about to begin installation when I realized it would screw up the TV picture and kill all my friends with pacemakers. I have therefore installed a large central vacuum pump beneath the floor which is plumbed to the inside of the wall spaces. I have drilled millions of microscopic holes in said walls, and can now throw anything up there and have it stick. Excuse me while I go peel the neighbors cat off the foyer.

regards, d.k.

Ooops

Hi Doug,

Sorry, I had Chuck Wagner in there for the Anatolian kilim in the hallway. Lamentable lack of concentration . That was your honor I was defending by giving Patrick back his callous bacon remarks in spades. The runner (i. e., kilim) does really look boffo in that hallway, and I am impressed that it works so well. An inspired application of rugs-as decor know-how, all in all.

With that vacuum setup in your home, you probably can dispense completely with velcro. Remarkable.

Hi all,

Pat, it takes a lot of perseverance to find a runner with scary colors that can still look not that bad in a hallway. I suspect the incandescent light has a damping effect on the otherwise rather hard to miss fuschia in that thing.

Also, I don't have my copy of Opie's Tribal Rugs here so I can't check, but it seems that it was the source of the info I used to reckon this runner is a Bakhtiari piece.

Doug,

I like the Anatolian runner. No problem with distractions in that hallway. I think you should start filling the walls and wait until you get a definite signal that you crossed the "clutter threshold". Then take two pieces down and retest.

Rich,

The other runner I posted is a Sennah kilim.


And for all, I don't think I've ever shown you this thing before, so..

Here is a RUNNER (as opposed to, runner...). This bad boy is 51 1/2 inches wide and 161 inches long. Had I put it in the hall where the Bakhtiari (unless someone can explain why it ain't...) is, it would lap up about 10 inches on each side.

It's a Seichour piece, my guess it early latest 1800's to 1900's. I've been wanting one for a couple decades, and an opportunity to get the colors and motifs I like - at an acceptable price - finally came along a couple years ago.

It will fit in the hall where the Senneh is; we may put out out again once the flooding season is past.

Here's the whole thing (this image has been sharpened, so there's a little more contrast in the light colors that actually exists):



It has a not particularly unpleasant pale yellow:


A closeup of the back:


Regards,
Chuck Wagner

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Chuck Wagner

Wow Chuck!
seriously fun rug.
You could rent it out for weddings.

I will continue to stretch the clutter envelope here.
A few years ago the family dog had knee surgery, and the vet said all hardwood had to be covered lest the patient slip and undo the repairs. No kidding. All the items I had -even the horrible orange and purple ebay mistakes -were required to cover the entire floor with a bizarre adjustable quilt of weavings. I was in heaven. My wife never fully recovered from the trauma - so I must exercise restraint.

Really do like that rug. Is the wool as shiny as it looks or is that the sunshine?

d.k.

I guess d.k. stands for Doug Klingensmith…
In any case, the last poster is kindly requested to use is full name when overwriting the “Unregistered” in the post window.
Thanks,

Filiberto

Hi Chuck,

I've always liked those. It's a beauty. The teal green, blue and rose, with just enough yellow, look great together. But where to put it?

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Rich Larkin

Hi Patrick,

Looking at your runner on my home monitor, I'm not so taken with its resemblance to my old South Persian runner. The monitor at the office makes all these things look darker.

There are distinctive features of the weaving, such as the flatwoven ends, the treatment of the selvages, and maybe some little bead of embroidery between the limit of the pile and the start of the kilim end, that ought to point us to a source. Of course, you'd be high on the list of people I'd want to explain all that to me.

I wonder how a lot of our colleagues who graciously showed us their display of rugs came to acquire some of them. That question probably falls outside the scope of the thread, but inquiring minds want to know.

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Rich Larkin

e-bay

Richard,

I got this beauty on e-bay in the "Rugs, Hideously Synthetic" section. I can't believe I was the only bidder!

We had recently bought our current house and spent a week tearing up the tawdry wall-to-wall in every room except the entry, kitchen and baths. Pulling up the staples that had been used to affix the foam padding was the worst part because there had been probably two times that wall-to-wall had been used. The second time around, the installers had removed the first layer and the foam padding and instead of removing the staples they hammered them into the hardwood.

We removed almost every single smashed and hammered staple, day after day, night after night on hands and knees with needle nose pliers, hammers, ice picks, screwdrivers (with orange juice and vodka of course) and loud music.
Then we had the large holes, missing sections, broken pieces and rotten oak removed, replaced and refinished.
Oops, now we needed some rugs. Months of useless searching for a rug that would fit a narrow western hallway resulted in nothing. Most are like Chuck's piece, too wide and not long enough, or narrow like Doug's but not long enough.
What were those crazy weavers thinking? Didn't they know that we indolent westerners were not intending to use these things in front of our tents?
Not wishing to spend a cold and dreary winter trudging up and down that empty, narrow hallway I snapped up the first rug that I had seen that was almost long enough and almost narrow enough.
I think it is more likely northwest Iran because of the triangular end finish, the twining in the end kilim and the three cord overcast selvage. It may have been made in the psychedelic sixties. A true historical artifact which I will donate to the local historic art museum someday.....


Patrick Weiler

Hi Doug,

No, the rug is more subtle and has less of a sheen than it appears to have in that image, which was taken in full sunlight and, which I sharpened in order to bring up the detail. The rose pink is actually quite pleasant; I'm afraid the digital camera response in bright sun oversaturates the reds a little (less so than my old Nikon, however).

Each of the field fill colors has a nice abrash as well, so the rug has a mellow overall look. This one is a village or workshop piece; the older (possibly) tribal ones don't have the floral elements in the borders, but that's what I was looking for. In the ideal world, an ivory ground would have been nice but they're typically unaffordable.

Maybe we should turn this into the runner thread...

Regards,
Chuck

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Chuck Wagner

oops

My apologies for the spastic keystroke that somehow transformed me into the mysterious unregistered "er" on my last post.

Chuck- If my contractor ever finishes our bathroom remodel I'm sure he'd be happy to add a room to your house where you could keep your rug. Eventually. Regarding runners; John Howe was kind enough to give me a little book entitled "Oriental Rugs in Color" by Preben Liebtrau, which describes a traditional Iranian rug arrangement that includes long narrow rugs (about 1 yard wide) he calls "Kenarehs". It is on p 21 if anybody has a copy.
These have nothing to do with hallways, but I wonder if many of the early to mid 20th cent. "runners" are really these.
d.k.

posting pictures

Can I or may I post some pictures in this discussion? I'm really enjoying the images of everyone's rugs at home, and would like to participate.

Hi Janet

Of course. The easiest way to do it is to send the pictures to me as e-mail attachments. I'll send you back instructions on how to make them appear in a message. If you are comfortable with image editing, it makes it easier for me if you adjust the image dimensions to not more than 600 pixels wide and the JPG compression to keep the file sizes below, say, 125 kb. If you prefer not to do the image editing, I'll take care of it.

Regards

Steve Price

Space available

Hi Chuck,

Just to let you know that I have just measured my floor tiles and I can definitely fit your runner.

Its party time here. My husband uncharacteristicly just suggested we pull up all the grotty old carpet in the bedrooms and put down cold white tiles.
Good in the ME but just crying out for a few rugs.... at last more space!
I think I'll send my hubby to the doctor though he walked into that one too easily

cheers
Johanna

The Wall

Hi all,

When we decide to cycle the hallway Senneh with the Seizhour runner, I'll post it in S&T. That said, it looks like the runners may have have run their course...

(the absolute best you can expect from a pun is a good groan; bet I got at least one...)

To keep the momentum up on the "pictures" part of the project, and just because I think some of you may like this (there are more), here's another long narrow thing:



These are from southeast Asia - "ider ider" bands - they are strung around temples to enhance "the moment" whether it be a wedding, a death, whatever. Lots of embroidered images of Hindu deities and pseudodeities.

Regards,
Chuck Wagner

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Chuck Wagner

another hodgepodge

Dear all,
Here are some pictures of the hodgepodge of rugs and handed-down furniture that my husband, two young boys, and I live with in our tiny apartment. I really hope to receive some feedback on the motley selection, which I nonetheless love.


This is looking at our living area from the stairs. There are several war rugs placed around that cover spots in the hated wall-to-wall. On the right are several, older rugs that are layered over a ledge next to more stairs: in addition to these, we have two big rugs rolled up and in storage -- both of which are worn to the nubbins.


Another living "room" view, foregrounding a very coarsely woven war rug, whose motifs have almost a cartoonish aspect. Draped over the back of the armchair is a bag that may be the one Ebay purchase I am less than thrilled with. We have a Yomut bagface that isn't pictured in this posting, along with a Baluch bag with front and back intact, but other parts missing. The former came from a rug shop in Orange County, the latter was bought on Ebay: they both are wonderful.


This is looking into my husband's tiny office. I hate to say it, but he is more enthusiastic about the war rugs, than he is about the more traditional designs.


This is another view of the layer o' rugs by the stairs. I've removed the Persian city carpet to expose a section of the Baluch that is my absolute favorite rug. The selvedges, which are folded under on each side, need work but it's in overall very good condition.


I bought this torba (possibly Yomut or possibly Chodor) from a dealer on Ebay. I've found Ebay to be a good source. We live in a real rug wasteland, here in Fort Worth, so having access to so many images of rugs on Ebay is wonderful. I understand the risks involved by not being able to really see the colors and feel the hand, but maybe that opportunity will come when we move back North. Anyway, the torba hangs in our upstairs "hall".


These rugs are in our boys' room. Our older son, who is 12, is more interested in rugs in general than is our younger boy, who is 10.

Fascinating, Janet. A family of war rug devotees. No one can say you all are following the herd. Any chance of seeing more of the folded under Baluch? We promise not to say anything bad about the selvages.

Thanks for the reply. I'll send in the pictures I have of the Baluch and see about getting them posted.

What Was That?

Janet,

The war rugs add a child-like appeal (notwithstanding their serious content).

That "older rug" pile with the "city carpet" you removed looks like it has writing in a white-ground border. It would also be interesting to see a full-frontal pose of that one, too.

Patrick Weiler

Patrick, thanks for your observation about what I also perceive as a sort of child-likeness to the war rugs. I will say that most of those that I own are not terribly sophisticated. Others can be much more so -- more refined and, as such, perhaps more 'grown up' in their appearance. One nice thing about such rugs is that, if you can find them, their prices are more affordable to someone like me than are prices for, say, a comparably sized, 19th-century Turkoman piece in good condition.
Anyway, you're right about that city carpet: one of its borders does bear an inscription, which we've never gotten translated. I mentioned in an earlier post that it was 'little sister' to a room-size rug that my husband's great-grandfather bought in Istanbul. At one point, John's mom and dad sent it out to be cleaned. The rug cleaner/dealer sent back a carefully wrapped bundle, which no one bothered opening for I don't know how long. When they did get around to opening it, all it contained was a carpet pad.
But I will get at least one additional picture of it posted. Thanks for your interest.

more rug views

Here are full frontal views of both of the older rugs.


This is the Persian city carpet. At least, that's what I think it is. It's very nice, but also sort of generic seeming.


Here is the Baluch, which seems to fall into the Timuri category. But there seems to be so much disagreement about what really constitutes a Baluch rug, or whether or not there is really such a thing as a Timuri rug ... . I feel like everything needs to be put in quotation marks anymore.

If anyone has any thoughts about what these guys are, I'd love to hear back! Thanks for your interest!

Certainly Serviceable Senneh

Janet,

Your Persian City Rug appears to be a Senneh, a single-wefted Kurdish city rug from the Sanandaj area of NW Iran. They are said to have a particular feel, like "sandpaper", or roughness to the weave from the back.
They often have this herati pattern field. Bijar rugs also were made in large numbers with this pattern. And it was popular enough that the design has been copied by Indian and Chinese weavers, too.
Senneh kilims also were woven in this style, with eccentric wefting which makes the motifs curve.
The white border design seems to be a repeat, so if it is writing, the same thing is written all the way around the rug. "I promise not to disobey my mother again, I promise not to disobey my mother again, I promise......

Patrick Weiler

Hi Janet,

The Persian rug could be from the Malayer or Feraghan area. Can we see the back? I would expect it to be single wefted. I like the Baluch. Plenty happening on that one.

Guys, thanks for your feedback. Patrick, I checked the back of the Persian and it does indeed feel like sandpaper. I'll see about getting a detail of the back. Richard, I know what you mean about things going on in that Baluch. It makes me a bit giddy.