Oriental Rugs: A Buyer's Guide

by Lee Allane

A guide to modern oriental rugs, explaining the techniques, materials, and tools used in making them, and discussing quality, design, color schemes, and resale values. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0500275173
• ISBN13: 9780500275177
• Release Date: October 1988
• Publisher: Thames & Hudson
• Length: 136 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 7.1" x 10.1"

Customer Reviews

Read this, buy smart

I've been looking for a great rug buyer's guide, working in the rug industry. It's hard to come across a good resource out there. I'd say that this is a good primer on rugs, if you want to make sure you're buying right. Saves you from the regret of making the wrong rug purchase, or the tediousness of having to deal with customer service departments of rug companies. Just like any big purchase, rug buying must be treated with the right amount of reverence. Great resource. Recommended.

Review

This book has really helped me increase my knowledge and ability to recognize different kinds of rugs in a dealer's showroom. There are good color photographs, many diagrams about motifs and descriptions of features that rugs from various locales have. I keep going back to the book and re-reading things I didn't pick up before. It is definitely a buyers' guide.

Plentiful information for novices

I found this book a useful text for beginners. It provides organized information without being overly complex and boring. One benefit of the book is that occasionally when the author makes reference to an item explained in detail elsewhere in the text, a page number is given so the reader can jump to the detailed description if necessary. It's the 1980's version of hyperlinks. The color plates are beautiful, but lack descriptions of the sizes of the rugs. Also lacking is the pronunciation guide; A basic guide exists, but falls short by lacking pronunciations for all but one or two words. I was also hoping to read a discussion of the varrying lengths of rug fringes, which this book did not discuss. A final benefit of the book is the last chapter on the major and minor weaving groups. These sections provide a good source of reference when one needs to get quick, basic information about a particular group.

Great Help for Beginners in Oriental Rugs

If you have recently been bitten by the Oriental Rug bug, here is a down to earth book for to help you through the complicated names of regions and styles. The author gives everything you need to know without overwhelming you with a subject and a trade hundreds of years old. Moreover, the pictures are a great visual aid for showing examples of rugs mentioned in a well written text. This book will make easier your understanding of the subject and get you off to a good start to an enjoyable pursuit.

A Must For Collectors

As said in the synopsis - this is a book on available rugs not ones gracing the walls of museums or showing up in the big auction houses for 30 000 bucks. As a rug dealer, I use his books as a bible (perhaps Quran would be more appropriate!) and they have never let me down. As I tell my customers... before you invest a 1000 dollars on a rug, invest 15 dollars to learn more about them. You will be amazed at how carpet dealers will drop their prices as soon as you show even a small amount of knowledge. Best series by far. Enjoy.