Tag / carpet

Buying Carpets and Books in Pakistan
by Vanessa Nirode

Buying Carpets and Books in Pakistan

I have a confession to make. A month or so ago when in Pakistan, I bought a $1500.00 carpet. Now, before you think that that is an inordinately high price for a carpet, I just want to say that it’s a handmade Kazakh rug. And I talked the store owner down from his original price of $4000.00, which I think is a pretty admirable demonstration of bargaining skills.

The carpet is a large one, four feet wide by six feet long. It’s made up of a bunch of four-inch squares with intricate multiple geometric and realistic images. It’s also a dimensional rug, having raised yarn borders around the squares. Bulbous tassels adorn the sides. The colors are all muted tans, yellows, golds, burgundies, greens, and blues. Piot, who was at the carpet store with me, said it looked like a rug meant for royalty. I definitely agree.

closeup of one of the squares

closeup of one of the squares

A brief history of Kazakh rugs:

Kazakh, originally a tribal name, is now a town, river and district in Azerbaijan. Carpets made by Kazakhs often feature coarse, long pile and dramatic colors and designs (all of which my carpet has in spades). Using Turkish knots, they’re generally made by Turkic nomads who are now settled. Today, lots of new Kazakh carpets are made in Pakistan inspired by old Caucasian designs. They use yarn dyed from natural vegetable dyes.

Detail of my carpet.

Detail of my carpet.

In Pakistan, you can also find Afghan rugs made by refugees who now reside there. During occupation by the Soviet Union between 1979 and 1992, close to one million Afghans fled their homeland and ended up in Pakistan and Iran. Afghan rugs are known to be durable and well made. They reflect the heritage of a cottage-based industry passed on through generations. Different qualities of pile carpets are available including felted wool ones called Namads, flat non-pile woven rugs called Kilims, and pile and knotted ones made from cotton, silk, and wool. It can take six to nine months to make a hand knotted carpet. When you think of it like that, $1500.00 doesn’t seem so high of a price.

You may be wondering how I managed to negotiate my price down to an amount more than 50% less than the original quoted price. The answer is pretty easy. I was completely prepared to leave the store without buying the carpet. The owner played that game where he asked how much I wanted to pay and had me write it down. I did. And then I refused to budge. He tried to cajole and guilt me into agreeing to a higher amount but I just kept saying no. Finally, our little group of four, gathered up our things and started to walk out the door. At this point, he finally said yes to my $1500.00 and the carpet was mine.

I bought my carpet at Afghan Carpet on School Road in Islamabad. If you are ever there, I encourage you to go visit them in person. They have a very large selection and serve some excellent tea. And they’re always up for a good strong negotiator.

My carpet at home in Harlem.

My carpet at home in Harlem.

This isn’t necessarily sewing related but, Afghan Carpet is down the street from one of the world’s largest bookstores (yes, that’s right, in Islamabad) called Saed’s Book Bank. The store is three stories and 42,000 square feet. They display around 200,000 titles and stock more than four million books throughout its five warehouses. You can literally find most anything there. Saed carries Cosmo and Heavy Metal Magazine, as well as books about Islam and Richard Dawkin’s atheist treatise, The God Delusion. You can find books on Catholicism and queer studies, an English translation of the Quran, maps and travel books, and novels by pretty much any English or American author you can think of. The store is a truly fantastic and amazing place to visit, especially when you consider that it sells predominantly books written in English in a country where that is most people’s second language. The New York Times published a wonderful article a few years ago about the store if you’re interested in reading more.

This is also my little way of saying that people are never wholly their governments and places are often not as scary as most media reports would lead you to believe. And there is truth and beauty and wonderful people wherever you travel, if you take the time to look for it.

Carpet Magic from Egypt
by Vanessa Nirode

Carpet Magic from Egypt

Some of the beautiful silk & cotton rugs can take up to 14 to 16 months to make.

Some of the beautiful silk & cotton rugs can take up to 14 to 16 months to make.

I visited a carpet making school while I was in Egypt.

The school, on Sakkara Road in Giza, was called ‘New Egypt for Oriental Carpets’. The building was a vast stone structure, wide stone steps leading up to the second floor showroom and into the main entrance on the ground floor.

Back to school

The front wood doors opened into a vast, high ceilinged, airy room. Looms of varying widths, reaching from floor to ceiling lined the walls. On two sides, children manned the looms. They were of all different ages, the youngest appearing to be around 7 –  all the way up to 16 or 18.

Each child sat a wood bench in a front a loom longer and wider than at least three or four of himself. They were all boys.

The children, along with learning how to make hand tied rugs from wool and silk and cotton, also study reading and writing. Acquiring the skill of carpet making allows them the opportunity to stay in their hometowns and earn a good wage for a trade. They can also continue their education elsewhere if they desire.

My guide and I stopped behind one of the youngest boys. He turned with a toothy grin to wave at me, then turned back to his loom. The speed and dexterity of his fingers as he tied the long strands of wool into knots was mesmerizing.

The oldest group of carpet makers at the school were no longer pupils but artists. They didn’t work from a preconceived mapped out design but from pictures in their own heads.

The youngest pupils work on the simpler designs made predominately of wool. They have long sheets of paper that show the colors required to complete a specific design – kind of like the directions that come with any rug latch-hook kit you can buy at a craft store. But much more complicated and a lot more extensive.

Snatch the pebble from my hand, Grasshopper

Another young man of about 13 years of age was working on a rug made of cotton and silk.

“Slow down,” said my guide, “Slow down so she can see.”

He dutifully slowed his flying fingers. He worked across the loom width-wise, tying strands of silk to a sturdy cotton thread already inserted in the loom. When he finished a row, he used a wired brush to push the knotted strand down tight against its neighbor.

He demonstrated the trimming process that happens at the completion of a rug, using heavy scissors to trim the fuzz like you do to an old sweater when it’s balled and pilled up.

On the backside of the rug, I could see the long threads left where he changed colors of silk. After he’d woven in all the strands, he would go back and cut and tie all the ends so that the back of the rug looked as beautiful and clean as the front.

The student becomes the master

The oldest group of carpet makers at the school were no longer pupils but artists. They didn’t work from a preconceived mapped out design but from pictures in their own heads. They used smaller looms they could stand up at, manipulating the contraption up and down with a lever by their feet, tying and weaving the yarns with their hands.

Some of the rugs can take up to 14 to 16 months to make – truly astounding in this world of mass, quick consumerism. All of the students and artists I encountered at the school seemed to have a genuine pride for what they were doing, and a patience I suspect is increasingly rare in the instant gratification, selfie-taking, googling, internet shopping world of many western civilizations.

Works of art

As soon as I laid eyes on you, I knew that you'd be mine.

As soon as I laid eyes on you, I knew that you’d be mine.

The second floor of the school was the showroom filled with all kinds of stunning rugs. Drinking a complimentary cup of tea, I wandered amongst the treasures for a good part of an hour (or maybe two). I finally decided on two carpets I wanted to purchase.

But, since I was in Egypt, the actual buying of things involved a thirty-minute bargaining session. I pretended I hadn’t already decided which rugs I liked the best and asked to see some more similar to my initial selection. I remained undecided for a significant amount of time, especially once price came into question, hemming and hawing and murmuring and looking around.

After settling on a cotton and silk rug, I then asked about the tapestries. I’d spotted the one I wanted quite some time ago. It was one of the artist done ones with yellow and orange flowers, swans, and blue sky and water with pink water lilies. After some more back and forth, we finally agreed upon a price for both the pieces I wanted.

The cherry on top

My freebie tapestry. A nice touch.

My freebie tapestry. A nice touch.

Then, in true Egyptian fashion, the salesman offered me one more tapestry I could choose from a pile as a gift. I suspect this pile consisted of the practice tapestries done by the younger students but they were all alluring in their own right and I choose a long narrow hanging of yellow with camel silhouettes.

I left the school quite happy with my purchases and the opportunity to have seen the young carpet makers at work – and to contribute to the Egyptian economy and the school.

Now, back at home in New York City, my Egyptian carpets have been happily integrated into my home carrying with them the legacy and craftsmanship of centuries.

A Little Bit of History from the Desert
by Vanessa Nirode

A Little Bit of History from the Desert

Here's a picture from my balcony in Madaba, Jordan. I hope to find some interesting textiles in the bazaars as I travel through the country.

Here’s a picture from my balcony in Madaba, Jordan. I hope to find some interesting textiles in the bazaars as I travel through the country.

I’m in Jordan today. Yes, the Jordan in the Middle East, northeast of Egypt and Israel. I woke up in Madaba to a beautiful sunrise and rose blooms over the desert. I’m here on holiday, to ride my bike and spend the later afternoons looking for textiles in the bazaars.

The Middle East has always been a nexus of textile production. Trade routes commonly known as the Silk Road terminated on their western end in the eastern Mediterranean ports. As a result, these markets were also the centers of textile production.

Textiles of the Middle East during the Middle Ages were highly prized goods. I’d venture to say they still are. Many of the words we use to describe textiles in the English language are derived from Persian, Arabic, and Turkish – terms like damask, taffeta, cotton, muslin, seersucker, and mohair.

Historical value

Long ago, textiles in this region were also often accepted as payment of taxes or other moneys owed. Visiting officials and ambassadors were given gifts of cloth or garments. In a part of the world where much of the population was once primarily nomadic, interiors were furnished with textiles used to cover floors, walls, cushions, and to create beds and storage of all kinds.

Traditionally, gifts of any kind were also presented in a textile wrapper. The more elaborate the wrapper the greater honor was intended. Textiles were thought to be able to hold powers of protection or harm, depending on the symbols and inscriptions incorporated into them.

After the death of Muhammad, representation of living creatures was banned in most cultures of the region. As a result, Islamic design developed a beautiful metaphorical language all its own, utilizing geometry, calligraphy, vegetal, and architectural forms (though in many Persian & Central Asian silks and carpets, human and animal figures do appear).

Silk

Elaborately patterned silks were produced throughout the Middle East in all sorts of complex weaves – such as twills, lampas, and brocades. Silks of a more simple nature, tafta and satin weaves, were also quite numerous. A cloth made from a silk warp and a cotton weft, known as alaca, produced a more “economical” textile.

Tiraz textiles are a silk fabric, particularly important from the tenth to the fourteenth centuries, embellished with a border containing inscriptions of religious quotations and often woven in gold thread. Baghdad was the best known source of tiraz but it was produced in many other Middle Eastern locations. The borders appear most commonly on upper sleeve bands. They are were also found on burial shrouds and ceremonial textiles.

Cotton and linen

Both cotton and linen, ranging more heavy canvas to lightweight gauze, were widely produced in the Middle East. Textile printing also existed and, by the sixteenth century, a printing industry existed in Syria, later expanding into Anatolia.

Mohair and wool

Mohair, camel hair, and goat hair – referred to as cashmere or pashima, is used to weave soft and beautifully patterned shawls throughout the region. These shawls became very popular in the west during the nineteenth century.

The patterns, woven in twill tapestry or other complex compound weaves, featured colorful and elaborate designs. One such design was a complex vegetal one known as boteh. In the west this design became to be known as the paisley motif, named after Paisley, Scotland where textile mills produced copies of the design in the latter nineteenth century.

The best known wool textiles of the region are the pile and flat cloths made as rugs, bags, wall coverings, and the like. The oldest surviving example of Islamic carpet weaving is the “Fostat” fragment from the ninth century found in Cairo.

Carpet design can be divided into 3 categories

  1. Tribal carpets, produced by nomadic or village households for their own use, tend to be geometric in design and reflect regional affiliations.
  2. Court carpets, created by the finest artists of the day, are usually the most intricate and finely knotted.
  3. Urban manufactured carpets are the third category. These are often technically fine but most often have less intricate designs.

Adventure time!

I’m excited to see what kinds of things I’ll be able to unearth over the next week as I wander about Jordan. Hopefully, I’ll have some interesting finds to share with you!

Textiles, especially those that are handmade, have such a deep history. I love learning about a design or technique that is unique or specific to a certain village or area. I also enjoy meeting local artisans who still produce works of art in the same way their ancestors always have.

This all ties into one of my previous posts about passing on skilled expertise to younger generations. Its a tradition pretty much as old as human civilization and one very much worth sustaining.

I wish you all a week of amazing discoveries (whether they be ancient or not). Next week I’ll be posting from Cairo. Arak qaribanaan.