Tuduc Rugs

Textile scholars ranging from James Ballard to M.S. Dimand and Ulrich Shurmann have fallen for his fake rugs. Though initially dismissed as unfortunate frauds, Tuduc rugs have since become collectible in their own right. The rug value of these pieces has increased over the years because of their place in the historical narrative of forgeries and artistic license. Recent auctions have included Tuduc rugs that sell for tens of thousands of dollars.

It is common to find Tuduc forgeries in even the most reputable of private collections. Tuduc rugs have graced world-class collections across Europe and the USA, including the Victoria & Albert Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Stefano Ionescu, a Transylvanian scholar on Oriental rugs and author of Handbook of Fakes by Tuduc, spent over a decade researching Tuduc rugs in museums, auction houses, and private collections. He examined collections throughout the western world in Romania as well as Bucharest, New York, Toronto, and London. At a symposium in San Francisco in 2012, Ionescu presented 80 slides about his research and led a participatory workshop in which session participants compared Tuduc forgeries with authentic examples.

Ionsecu concluded the workshop with an interactive game of “guess who”. Participants guessed whether the rugs were real or fake and then learned how to determine a fake rug, decide whether to attribute a fake to Tuduc, and assign a value to the rug based on this information.

In recent years, a number of other museums have hosted similar programs. In 2011, the Textile Museum of Canada in Toronto hosted a workshop on Tuduc’s rugs. A similar event was hosted at The Nick Arts Museum in Calgary.

As long as Tuduc fakes continue to show up in private and museum collections, their story will continue to make waves in the textile community.

Funnily enough, the antique Tuduc rugs were such great and artistic carpets that they have ironically become highly valuable by antique carpet collectors.

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