About New Oriental Rugs & Carpets

For much of the twentieth century the interest in Oriental rugs and carpets has come increasingly to focus on the concept of the antique rug as the standard of excellence, and there are certainly good reasons for this. The influence of western dye and machine spinning technologies, along with the enormous new demand for oriental rugs that developed from the late nineteenth century onward, all contributed to a rapid decrease in quality in terms of the materials, the weave, and the designs. By the nineteen thirties it was easy to tell the difference between rugs made up to about World War One, and those made after. From this point up until relatively recently, the "new rug" emerged as something inferior to the discerning buyer. And to investors, new rugs did not have and could not hold the intrinsic value of an antique piece.

More recently, however, there has been a marked upswing in the quality of new rugs made in a traditional style or vein in Turkey, Egypt, Persia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Tibet, Nepal, and China. They are once again made with high quality, handspun wool, natural dyes, and greater attention to preserving the form and nuance of traditional design. In many cases, moreover, the makers of traditionally inspired new rugs have succeeded in adapting and recombining traditional forms to produce fresh designs that have a certain authenticity, but whose patterns and colors work better in modern western settings. Because of this, prospective buyers of oriental rugs once again have the option of buying newly made quality pieces at competitive prices, just as they did in the decades around 1900. We have to remember, that once upon a time, even the finest and most prized antique carpet was a new rug.