One of the greatest perks of working at Nazmiyal is that I get to enjoy seeing all the beautiful fresh inventory that continually comes in. There is no doubt that Jason has a great eye and since we ( The Nazmiyal Collection ) are one of the only antique oriental rug companies that still focuses solely on the antiques we are constantly on the hunt for that next great find!

While pretty much every single rug company has been shifting their main focus to new and custom made rugs – we at Nazmiyal have remained true to our commitment of finding, buying and selling some of the best antique oriental rugs and vintage carpets (such as Swedish and Scandinavian Rugs) in the world.

I have included four of our most recent acquisitions – all these antique rugs are different and yet each one is magnificent in its own way… don’t you agree?

1 – A beautiful Art Deco rug – 14′ x 16 ‘ (Rugs # 45072)

2 – A magnificent Antique Bakshaish Rug – 12′ x 19′ ( Rug # 44164)

3 – A great open field Oushak Rug – 10′ x 14′ ( Rug #44890)

4 – Phenomenal Vintage Arts & Crafts Rug – 9’6” x 12 (Rug #45495)

Nazmiyal Assists L.A. Museum to Sell Two French Carpets

Nazmiyal Provides Antique Rug for Top London Designer

England has always been a nation that appreciates fine rugs and carpets and has left its impression in the antique rug world with great antique carpets. Today, the top interior designers in the UK represent the newest incarnation of England’s love for beautiful antique rugs, carpets, and textiles. Among the elite interior designers in England today is the Douglas Mackie Design firm, whom Nazmiyal is proud to have provided antique carpets to for their recent project.

By working with the best designers in London, we hope to streamline the acquisitions process for clients overseas while increasing customer access and improving the buying experience. “In today’s global economy, it is just as easy to sell an antique rug overseas as it is here in New York City. It’s truly amazing to me the kind of international response we have received especially over the past few years and it’s truly a pleasure to be able to supply great international designers like Douglas,” says Jason Nazmiyal, owner of the Nazmiyal Collection.

Douglas Mackie is one of the UK’s top 100 designers according to House and Garden magazine. Nazmiyal Collection specializes in sourcing antique rugs for the tastemakers of today’s interior design world.

Nazmiyal Antique Rugs offers one of the most comprehensive collections of antique rugs in the world

Source: Art Daily ]]> http://nazmiyalantiquerugs.com/nazmiyal-antique-rugs-offers-one-of-the-most-comprehensive-collections-of-antique-rugs-in-the-world/feed/ 0 http://nazmiyalantiquerugs.com/2011/08/persian-eye-chart-by-wilbur-pierce/ http://nazmiyalantiquerugs.com/2011/08/persian-eye-chart-by-wilbur-pierce/#comments Thu, 25 Aug 2011 04:21:48 +0000 contact@nazmiyal.com http://nazmiyalantiquerugs.comut36beb6.setupmyblog.com/2006/07/02/persian-eye-chart-by-wilbur-pierce/ Continue reading →]]> A 20/20 Perspective on a Unique Carpet Dealer – Jason Nazmiyal

Middle Eastern literature is replete with stories of magic carpets that fly into fantasy and take their passengers to exotic worlds. In truth, that is exactly what an original Persian carpet does, for although you may not think that it flies, the beauty of these rugs is that they were made to be a floor tapestry woven to transport the owner into a world of gardens, flowers, cedars and flowing paradise waters. An escape from a barren world of hot sun and sand was and is created in a thicket of woven wool, cotton, silk and sometimes gold and silver thread. There is not much difference between the concrete jungle of our cities and the antiquity of Tach Jam Sheet (Persepolis). The carpet can make everyone a Shah, an Emir, a Pasha or a King, and regardless of room size, it can make every space a miniature exotic palace.

I’ve been a designer and collector of carpets for 35 years. In the decades of turning pages, visiting exotic lands and surfing the Internet, the task has been to find the dealer with the best eye. Few of us can trundle to auctions, bargain in Farsi and Turkish, jet set our way into strange and difficult climes, and pay obeisance to governments that especially today do not find Americans as lovable as we might hope. The result is our need to find an agent, an ambassador, a consultant, and a friend that can and will act as an emissary to cut the Gordian Knot. Such an agent may find a selection of artworks that in a modern world can fly us to places we fear to visit, or take us to streets and bazaars too difficult to navigate, which are delineated with alphabets as strange as hieroglyphics.

In that the world has unraveled itself into a pre-Columbus map drawn by our modern-day Amerigo Vespucci – Tom Freedman – carpet prices are as consistent whether one withdraws a ruble, dollar, franc or drachma from one’s wallet. Prices in the Central Bazaar in Istanbul, the Island of Kish, Iran or at the Textile Expo in Germany have all become “Ebayed”.

I have lifted many a carpet over with my toe to see a weave, pondered many a volume of curious lore about Middle Eastern floor and wall art, negotiated with at least 100 dealers, sorted by “highest price” on Internet search engines, and googled my way to 300 web sites with keywords like “Antique Rugs, Persian Rugs, Oriental Rugs, Serapi, Heriz, Agra, Sultanabad” etc., until I found the land beyond the Sambatyan  the land of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel, the Mother load of classy, rich, well-designed, antique, genteel and attractive carpets. But, it was not in Tehran, nor by the Bospherous, nor in the mountains of the Caucasus, but with Nazmiyal in New York and New Jersey. It’s co-owner, Jason responded to my fractured Farsi Chey Chabar with Salam a Tee, and we were soon putting in search fields and closing deals from my office and his showroom.

Jason did not request that I take time and write a letter of recommendation. He did not guide my computer keys in which I have waxed prolific in compliments it came as a result of my appreciation for his having saved me the air fare, hours and days of flipping heavy carpets taxing the men who with full brows of perspiration make me feel guilty regardless of venue. I write this out of sincere admiration for Jason’s ability to assemble a collection of the finest designs, whose prices reflect their value. Jason is a testament to that for which I have searched for 40 years, a person who shares my eye chart in the quality of woven art for which I have taken these many years of pleasure.

by Wilbur Pierce

Grunt’s and Grynt’s DNA traveled along strands of X and Y chromosomes linking them to a woman from Central Asia who twisted fibers making a carpet known as Pazyryk, the most ancient known - two thousand three hundred years old.. Grunt and Grynt pounded minerals into power and dyed the fleece of their sheep and from it spun wool with which they learned to weave in Penelope’s frames and Homer’s pentameters.

They were cousins, grandfathers, grandmothers, uncles and aunts to the women of Persia, Turkey and the Caucasus, who made blankets to protect themselves from the frigidity of the steppes and the desert’s nighttime chill. Grynt wove saddlebags for camels and blankets for the caravanserai – the Holiday Inns of the Middle Eastern Silk Route.

In Cathay, while Peking was ducking the Mongol Hordes, Grynt coddled worms and cocoons and pulled a fine fiber that was treasured more than gold, spun into fabrics and woven into rugs for the Imperial Palace and traded along the Interstates of Asia Minor.

When in 711, the Moorish commander Tarik crossed the Pillars of Hercules into Spain, he carried with him a vast selection of carpets. History named the big rock of the Mediterranean Jebel al Tarik “ Gibraltar “ or Tarik’s Tower and, he by this invasion opened the Iberian carpet industry which eventually migrated into France. Caliphs, Pashas, Emirs and the Sublime Porte’s of the Levant from Phoenicia to Samarkand would for centuries weave their gardens, prayers, mosque’s, Kufic script, flowers, cedar trees, and serif’s into the rugs that made the desert bloom.

The weaver’s craft became the weaver’s art and the woolen designs decorated the floors of tents and the halls of palaces. The cave design eventually became a hunting carpet as rugs expressed daily life, hopes and aspirations. Designs became associated with tribes and the cities, towns of villages took on their own style so today, we can buy a Khotan, Kerman, Baktiari, Aubusson, Agra or Peking, each inducted into the carpet Hall of Fame.

By Europe’s medieval period, drafty caves and castles with their stone battlements needed hangings to insulate the royal derrieres from cold winds. Damp and dank stone offered protection against slings and arrows, but sent chills down the spines of its denizens, so the tapestry was created. When Grunt and Grynt became nobles, they showed how rich they were by weaving gold thread into these wall hangings and when they ran out of money, they drizzled the tapestries by pulling the gold out of them to pay debts or hire armies. The Grunts and Grynts at Gobelin were not only artists; their product was employed as HVAC – heating, ventilation and air-conditioning in a very non-polluting solution that was as beautiful as it was effective. But the floors were cold too and carpets gave warmth.

Grunt’s DNA is directly linked to a child in France who wove French Aubusson carpets below ground by the river Creuse where it was damp and where the wool was pliable, but the conditions so unhealthy that tuberculosis was heard in every cough. He was also the ancestor of a weaver at the Soap Factory or Savonnerie who executed designs for the Le Roi Soleil to decorate the palace at Versailles. While the King had Savonnerie, the bourgeois needed its own rugs at Aubusson. But while only the King could have plush rugs, the merchant class and nobles lived with a flat weaves.

Eventually, European carpet entrepreneurs like Ziegler sent designs to the weaving tribes of the Middle East to satisfy European tastes. Just as Soap Factory Carpets were made only for the king, Aubusson was founded to provide carpets for the bourgeoisie. Ziegler now made it possible so that speaking French was not necessary to decorate your home with a rug of sophisticated design. Now the king had his carpets, the nobles had theirs and the bourgeois enjoyed an artful floor.

But, until the Industrial Revolution, the weaver’s art was in the nimble and graceful fingers of women for the most part and a few men who rose to prominence in signing their carpets, much like Manet, Monet, DaVinci, Utrello, Titian or Kermani. Designs trumped quality and machine made replaced handmade while the love of the quality handmade originals remained the province of people with refined taste. Grynt and Grunt laid Oriental carpets in their manor house.

Although it appeared that automated weaving machines of Axminister would give the ax to the hand woven industry, instead it made rugs and carpets available to all people, rich and poor alike, potentates and plebeians. Like a newspaper, it spread the carpets to living room floors as much as it did over a sand dune. Instead of killing the market for rugs, the race for money through industrialization created a universal awareness. Grunt’s designs were known in Buenas Aires as much as they were in Paris, London, Dubai, Tehran or the Oval Office at the White House. If walls could have art, why not floors!

After food and shelter, mankind has throughout history sought to both design and decorate whether it was a wall, a quilt or a floor. The process of creating designs in their various forms were at first known as craft, but as it became more sophisticated, it was morphed into art where the skill of those who created them were prized and rewarded.

But a dichotomy developed, and new words entered the market. With each new invention to make weaving faster, there was the entrepreneurial ability to create at first decorator carpets and then mass market carpets. But, for the kings, princes whether of people or business, the Holy Grail of rug weaving remains in the hand-woven designs and production that spanned a few centuries and now wear the title of antique.

Now rare, these carpets have a pedigree and a patina, an almost unquantifiable aura about them that exudes quality, history and art in each knot. Even to the unschooled eye, words like good reproduction still evoke the message of “reproduction” and a carpet of lesser quality. Who would hang a reproduction Manet or a Botticelli in his living room and call it a decorator painting? Would Grunt or his wife buy a copy of the deer that graces the walls of his Neanderthalian cave? If Grunt can tell the difference, don’t you think you can?

The clean shaven man stood on the street looking into Jason Nazmiyal’s showroom. The woman’s name was Gryt and his name Grunt. He listened to her instructions, for they were husband and wife. As he was married, he did nothing right. They stood outside of the rug gallery.

Our place looks like a cave, she said.

Ten thousand years hasn’t made a difference my love.

I still do the design, and you lift and arrange the paintings and the rugs. We already did the ceiling; we need to put something spectacular on the floor, maybe a hunting carpet.

I can guarantee one thing, if you buy an antique rug, you will not lose your pants.

No wolves wailed. Grunt smiled. Grynt pointed where to place the rug. The cave was complete and they passed their DNA and the carpet onto the children. The woven strands of the carpet came through history like the woven strands of DNA.

I grew up in the Southwest in and around the desert. The power of the desert environment profoundly shaped my imagination and aesthetic sensibility. The desert is replete with both explosive and subtle spectacles of nature that have continued to influence my vision – the golden sunsets, the arroyos and canyons, the cloud formations, the vastness of the sky and most importantly the colors and tones of the actual earth.  I credit my grandmother with first inspiring me to become an interior designer.  She was an artist and collector of all kinds of exotic materials from around the world – pottery, shells, coral stones, minerals and different kinds of paper.  She created miniature worlds and environments all around her, so I followed suit very naturally.

I think immediately of Harry Bertoia whose kinetic sculptural qualities I admire. I also feel indebted to Tapio Wirkkala whose sensual and elegant designs were based on natural forms and materials, as well as to Hans Wegner whose expressive forms, natural materials and simplicity drew on ancient precedents.  Of course, I must count Antonio Guadi and Vladimir Kagan as part of my design pantheon.

		My newest and truest trend in designing is to understand that everything in a room from the smallest item to the largest has meaning and directly affects your experience of an environment.  My design philosophy is more curatorial than decorative. My motto is “curate, don’t decorate”.  Therefore, I intellectually and meticulously edit each and every item in a room, so as to maintain a clear purpose for every object.

By joining Nazmiyal, I see tremendous opportunity to introduce my clients to Jason’s vast collection of exceptional rugs at price points that are unmatched by other galleries. I have known the company since my entry into the rug world and I feel comfortable here. I am sure clients will appreciate the inviting atmosphere which is perfect for sitting back and getting inspired by the beauty of rugs.