Sotheby’s Sets Record with Antique Kirman Carpet Sale

World Record Shattered by Historical Kirman Vase Rug

A Message from Claremont Rug
Company President, Jan David Winitz

Today’s sale at Sotheby’s of William Andrews Clark’s Sickle-leaf, Vine Scroll and Palmette ‘Vase’-technique carpet for $33.76 M has enormous significance not only for the antique Oriental rug field, but for the art world as a whole.

Clearly the sale of this fabulous, incredibly rare historical carpet that was likely woven in the Persian city of Kirman for over 3-1/2 times the previous world record is a landmark, but it is also a precursor of a movement to come: the recognition that the best Oriental rugs woven in the 16th through 19th centuries stand on par with the best art works of other mediums.

A great rug possesses the ability to affect the mind and heart of man to see himself and the world in which he lives in a profound, deeply nourishing manner, which is the true definition of art.

It highlights what I have been saying for over 30 years–that antique Oriental carpets are undiscovered art that is now starting to become discovered.

Regards,

CLICK HERE to Read Jan David Winitz’s Further Comments Regarding this Historic Sale in the Wall Street Journal.

(photo courtesy of Sotheby’s)

Spring 2013 Brochure of Antique Persian Carpets from Claremont Rug Company

Our NEW Spring Print
Catalog Is Now Online

“Exquisitely Beautiful Antique Carpets” await you

View cover-to-cover in page turning format. See 31 awe-inspiring antique rugs and our clients’ gracious homes furnished with Persian and tribal carpets. Read commentary on decorating with Oriental carpets and collecting rare antique rugs.

View the screen-size slideshow. See each of the brochure rugs up close and read about them. Zoom in on any rug of interest to explore even its subtlest colors and most minute motifs. This 30-page catalog displays a remarkable diversity of  the very best of antique Persian and tribal carpets.  Be sure to see:

• ❖The world-class oversize Sultanabad carpet on p.5
• ❖Rare camel hair Bakshaish carpets on p. 10 & 25.
• ❖Bird-and-vase palace size Ferahan carpet on pp. 14-15
• ❖Three stellar19^th century collector’s rugs on pp. 20-21
• ❖Best of early 20^th century Persian carpets on pp. 22-23.

View 850+ art-level antique rugs from our vast collection.

Receive the print catalog free-of-charge for a limited time.

Contact us with your inquiries:
T: 800-441-1332, Int’l: +1-510-654-0816
info@claremontrug.com
6087 Claremont Avenue, Oakland, CA  94618
USA Hours:  Monday – Saturday. 11am – 6pm Pacific Time

Treasures from the Carolina Cache and Nine Other Private Collections

Antique Caucasian Shirvan Rug

People often ask us, “Where do you get such beautiful antique rugs?” Claremont Rug Company’s international buying team is continually seeking out the most breathtaking Oriental carpets for our customers who are furnishing their homes and the rarest 19^th century Persian and Caucasian rugs for our connoisseur clients.

The Carolina Cache featured here is the largest of the acquisitions we have made this winter. Each of the 19^th century carpets from this estate of a Southern banker is a standout, all 35 pieces revealing his unerring eye for uniqueness and artistic harmony.

The gallery also contains some of the dynamic antique carpets we recently acquired from Nine Other Private Caches as far flung as Greenwich and New Orleans, Pebble Beach and Yerevan, Armenia, Hawaii and Montreal. Don’t miss the exquisitely woven circa 1850 Senneh rug so fine you can fold it like a handkerchief. Or the glorious rainbow of soft colors in an oversize Sultanabad from the Carolina Cache. Or the mesmerizing iconography of a rare red-ground Caucasian Bidjov Shirvan.

VIEW A KALEIDOSCOPE OF OUR JUST-ACQUIRED ANTIQUE ART CARPETS

We look forward to introducing you to the many other Persian and tribal rugs in the caches represented here and to answering your specific inquiries.

Claremont Rug Company Reports “Intense Interest” in Bostonian Collection

U.S., International Art Collectors See ‘Best of Best’ Trove as Significant Investment Opportunity

Jan David Winitz, an eminent art dealer who specializes in 19th century antique Oriental rugs, today reported “an intense interest” in The Bostonian Collection, a trove of important, art-level to museum-caliber Persian and Caucasian rugs assembled by a New England-based family and held over four generations.

Winitz, president and founder of Claremont Rug Company, said, “Over one-third of the Bostonian Collection carpets have been sold within the first few weeks since opening the exhibit. A common theme among the buyers is their appreciation for the ‘best of the best’ quality of these antique rugs.”

Included in the Collection were 50 Persian, Caucasian and Turkish rugs woven 1800 to 1850 as well a significant number of early to mid-19th century examples of art/investment level Persian Motasham Kashan, Laver Kirman and Kermanshah rugs. Art collectors consider it one of the top three private acquisitions in the past decade.

Additional information about the “Bostonian Collection” event may be obtained from Claremont Rug Company (1-800-441-1332). A video of “The Bostonian Collection” is also available online.

Winitz said the largest number of purchases to date have been made by clients from Silicon Valley, where entrepreneurs, financial executives and venture capitalists have increasingly shown an interest in rare, 19^th century Persian rugs. More than 10 percent of the buyers have been from outside the U.S.

Over the past several years, the international art-collecting community has shown a deepening appreciation of the importance and relative value of antique Oriental rugs. “The Bostonian Collection has attracted intense interest from sophisticated art collectors who are newcomers to antique rugs,” he said. He also said, “Many buyers are those furnishing new homes who are accustomed to buying top caliber items.”

Similarly, as Douglas Druick, president and director of the Art Institute of Chicago, recently told the Washington Post, “It’s not like that moment in the late ’80s where everything — the best and the less-than-best — was rising. Now the market is much more savvy.”

In the case of the 180-piece Bostonian Collection, it is the first time that many of these antique rugs have been seen outside the family since they were originally acquired. Some of the Oriental carpets have been in storage since their purchase in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The provenance of many of the pieces is traceable to their original acquisition in the Near East. “And, because they were held privately, none of these rugs have previously been documented in the literature,” said Winitz.

“The family began collecting in the late 1800s and were among the first generation of serious American Oriental rug collectors,” said Winitz, who is also the author of The Guide to Purchasing an Oriental Rug. “Since the great-grandfather started collecting, two generations added to the cache, which was displayed at their six family residences.”

The other collections that Winitz compared with “The Bostonian” are the 400-rug “Hudson River Valley Collection” (2008) and the “Intercontinental Collection” (2010). Those events drew renewed attention to rugs from the Second Golden Age of Persian Weaving (ca 1800 to ca 1900).

Winitz founded Claremont Rug Company in 1980 and has since built an inventory comprised of more than 4000 rare Oriental carpets that are valued in the range of $20,000 to more than $500,000 per rug. To aid clients, the Gallery has more than 1000 19^th century and turn-of-the-20^th century rugs available for viewing and an extensive educational section on its website.

Antique Oriental Rug Spotlight: Bakhtiari, Part 1

Bakhtiari Antique Persian Rug

The Bakhtiari tribespeople of the rugged Zagros Mountains are famed for their perilous annual migrations over snow-capped peaks and for their lustrous, deep-toned antique carpets displaying grand scale, cornucopian designs. An early 20th-century visitor to the lush Chahar Mahal district in Central Persia noted: “To me Bakhtiari antique carpets are among the most interesting of the tribal village weavings of Persia . . . for they have that quality which we call character: that is, individuality, sincerity, and strength.”

Although they traditionally produced only geometric designs, the Bakhtiaris—along with the Armenian, Kurdish and other weavers of the Chahar Mahal—were also influenced by the floral carpets of the Persian cities, especially those of nearby Isfahan. This gave birth to an innovative and distinctive stylization. This is found especially in their palace-size and oversize antique Oriental carpets that were woven on commission by the great Bakhtiari khans. These are among the most highly regarded of the Bakhtiari antique carpets.

Until the 1930’s Bakhtiari antique carpets were characteristically woven for use by the tribe or on commission within Persia. As they were rarely produced to be exported, they offer lanolin-rich, extremely durable wool and luminous colors, which were procured through a thorough knowledge of dyeing, using natural dyestuffs.

Village Style Antique Oriental Rugs

The villages surrounding the major weaving cities and towns created antique Oriental rugs that married the casual nature of the tribal antique rugs and the greater formality of the town rugs. The designs are somewhat planned, often directed by the head weaver. The construction is looser also and village patterns tended to be drawn in a more angular manner than floral and stylized floral imagery woven in more sophisticated settings. The colors in village rugs presented a range of tonal variations, from subtle to dramatic. These cottage-level pieces were often woven in a weaver’s own home allowing her and her extended family to integrate weaving with their daily life responsibilities. Village antique Oriental carpets offer the most casual decorative possibility in room sizes and larger formats. The Bakshaish and Serapi carpets from the Azerbaijan region are the most famous and widely sought after of the village antique carpets.

Major styles of village antique rugs: Bakshaish, Serapi, Malayer, Serab, Heriz, and Bakhtiari.

Antique Oriental Rug Spotlight: Caucasian Rugs, Part Two

The Caucasian nomad often knew only two environments during his entire lifetime: the high mountain meadow to which he brought his sheep to graze during the summer, and the deep valley below in which he waited out the winter. He lived in either a small tent blackened with smoke or a “kosh,” a dimly lit sod hut literally dug out of a hillside. The nomad learned to have gratitude for anything that provided comfort or beauty, and gratitude that he had life itself.

Perhaps as an expression of the deep joy of a people living and working close to the earth, the tribesperson wove rugs. And the carpets he created were magnificent! As a whole, the Caucasian antique carpet possesses an individuality, a boldness and deep sense of unity which is unsurpassed in the world of oriental rugs.

What is most striking about the Caucasian antique Oriental rug is its daring use of color. Balance of color is achieved here not by shading, but rather through contrast. The predominant reds, blues, greens and yellows would seem clashing to the mind, yet in actuality, the unerring confidence of the Caucasian craftsmen created color combinations so harmonious that they have been marveled at and studied by Western artists for centuries!

The Caucasus lies at the very heart of the rug-weaving world. Conquering armies, including those of Genghis Khan, Tamerlane and the Golden Horde, the Persians and Turks, stormed across these mountains for over a thousand years. They left behind the influence of every rug-making tradition from Egypt to China. The illiterate Caucasian tribesperson, working on a small, portable loom, has taken the form of more sophisticated weaving cultures. By transforming these designs into simple geometrical proportions, they have brought to them a new freshness and spontaneity.

The entire evolution of tribal weaving can be seen in Caucasian antique Oriental carpets. The dragon motif, boteh, flowerhead, arabesque, palmette, birds, animals, cloudband and crab designs are all present. Sometimes many of these are found in a single rug! In the midst of powerful geometrical diamonds there may be a tiny horse, dog or gazelle. Determination and intensity side-by-side with good humor and lightness demonstrate the dexterity of the Caucasian weaver.

Because of the physical lack of accessibility of the Caucasus to the outside world and the spiritedness of its peoples, natural dyestuffs were still used almost exclusively through 1920. This is over fifty years after the introduction of much easier-to-work-with, but infinitely less brilliant analine dyes. Similarly, it was not until World War I and the Bolshevik Revolution that Caucasian antique rugs were woven for export. The many fine examples from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries are clearly original, authentic tribal works of art in every regard.

In short, the Caucasian nomad wove antique rugs for his own daily use, to satisfy his singular sense of creativity and harmony. Accordingly, he put a level of care into his work which seems virtually incomprehensible to us today. The wool he used provided a superior level of resilience and luster because it was shorn from the sheep which he himself had grazed in high mountain pastures. It was then cleaned and washed repeatedly so that it could thoroughly absorb the vibrant vegetable dyes.

The Caucasian weaver believed that only after the material of his craft was brought to its ultimate state could he be inspired to create a rug of ultimate balance and harmony. For he did not merely see his finished carpet as the work of art. Instead, the art lay in performing each step of the process to completion.

It is of little wonder that the weavings of the numerous Caucasian tribal groups enjoy a universal popularity among collectors of oriental rugs today. Both the thick-piled carpets from the most mountainous regions of Kazak, Karabagh and Gendje, and the thinner, more closely shorn Kubas, Shirvans, and Daghestans, from the lower slopes descending toward the Caspian Sea, are equally enchanting. These are the last remnants of an ancient weaving tradition which has now all but vanished. They are living examples which speak to us of both the gaiety and deep understanding of life possessed by their creators—the mountain weavers of the Caucasus.

Antique Oriental Rug Spotlight: Caucasian Rugs, Part One

Caucasian Antique Oriental Rug

When the Almighty Spirit first created the Earth, he made the land completely flat. Looking down at his creation, he was satisfied with his work, except for the fact that there were no mountains. So he loaded up an enormous sack with innumerable rocks and boulders, and sped down to distribute them across the surface of the Earth.

As the Almighty Spirit was approaching the planet, his enemy, the Evil One, accompanied by three cohorts – famine, pestilence and hardship – appeared behind him, and slashed open the bag full of mountains. The colossal rocks and boulders tumbled down to Earth, and landed one on top of the other on a narrow strip of land between the Black and Caspian Seas, the Caucasus.

In his anger, the Almighty Spirit issued forth a stern warning to the Evil One; that under no circumstances would he ever be allowed to enter the land of the Caucasus. “For,” as he gravely said, “after what has happened every day of living will be hard enough.”

No better impression of the physical environment of the Caucasus Mountains, where Caucasian antique rugs where made, can be depicted than from this traditional Caucasian folktale. Bordering Iran to the North, the Caucasus ranks among the most grandiose and hostile landscapes in the world. Here lies a single narrow ridge of mountains stretching 400 miles east to west and containing twelve peaks higher than the tallest in the Alps, along with numerous glaciers and tumbling gorges that rival those of the Himalayas. The mountains are climaxed by Mt. Elbruz, towering to 18,493 feet above sea level. Here, in Greek legend, the god Zeus chained Prometheus for eternity as punishment for delivering fire to man.

For centuries, the Caucasus has provided refuge for the nomadic peoples, creators of tribal antique rugs, who were forced to go there after being driven out of more hospitable areas. Before the purges of Joseph Stalin in the 1930s, approximately 350 different tribes resided in the Caucasus, speaking over 150 distinct languages. Along with the Moslem Lesghis, Chechen, and Talish, there were clans of Mountain Jews, Christian Armenians, Buddhist Kalmucks, Norsemen and even a group of Württemburg Germans. These mountain peoples were known both for their spirited sense of independence and their longevity, with many tribal elders apparently living decades past one hundred years. One clan, the Circassians, were noted for the great beauty of their women, who were sometimes either stolen or traded, breeding their olive complexions, striking eyes and distinguished countenances into the ruling families of Turkey.

The existence of the Caucasian tribesperson depended entirely on his ability to cultivate a simple innovativeness of lifestyle, along with a deep understanding of the natural forces which governed him. He learned to find strength and inspiration for the antique Oriental carpets he created in the harsh, yet majestic mountain surroundings. By living a life of almost continuous physical activity, he learned to tap into the instinctive nature hidden in man to guide him.

Oriental Rug Spotlight: Bakshaish, Part Two

Antique Oriental Bakshiash Carpet, Photograph courtesy of Claremont Rug Company

Bakshaish carpets were the product of the Persian home craft, often woven in roomsize (typically 9ft x 11ft to 11ft x 14ft) on a loom attached to the outside wall of the weaver’s home. Area sizes (normally 4ft 6in x 6ft 6in and sometimes as small as 2ft x 4ft) are only occasionally seen, the best of which are highly prized by serious collectors. Rare examples of very large sizes of these magnificent rugs can occasionally be found in sizes ranging from 11×15 to 12×18. Extremely seldom seen are sizes larger than 12×18, runners and keleges (corridor rugs) found in this style.

The best Bakshaish carpets offer a unique combination of geometric allover design or graphic medallion format with unparalleled use of natural color and soft tones for large format carpets. They fit perfectly into contemporary or casual decors, and brilliantly enhance the casual, organic ambiance of mountainside homes.

Among connoisseurs, early Bakshaish carpets, (especially circa 1875 or earlier, as well as the best late 19th century examples) are the most highly prized of the extremely desirable Northwest Persian village carpets. For lovers of tribal rugs that are only found in smaller sizes, the Bakshaish style offers a similar geometric, folkloric character in carpets of larger sizes.

The 19th-century examples of Bakshaish weaving, if artistically distinguished, memorable in their beauty and in good condition, have performed very solidly as art investments, especially since the mid-1990’s. Because of their great rarity, greatly inspired artistry and overwhelming appeal, the best 19th century representatives are widely sought after. Collectible-level pieces seldom come available on the public market, and when they do, often receive overwhelming demand.

Oriental Rug Spotlight: Bakshaish, Part One

Bakshaish is a town on the banks of the Talke Rud River in the Heriz region of Northwest Persia. Situated in the mountainous region 60 miles east of the large city of Tabriz, Bakshaish is the oldest rug weaving village in the district of Heriz, noted for carpets with highly artistic, tremendously diverse abstracted adaptations of age-old tribal and classical Persian motifs.

In their softness of color and line, the appearance of antique Bakshaishes somewhat resembles the Sultanabad carpets of Central Persia, yet with designs drawn to substantially more free form, improvisational and geometric proportions. These are folk art masterworks in which the individual artistic creative decision of the weavers can usually be abundantly seen. The viewer will take delight in discovering the idiosyncratic temperament of the Bakshaish weaver, as seldom is one motif drawn in exactly the same fashion twice, and borders and even center medallions are usually playfully misshapen. 

The best antique Bakshaishes are connoisseur’s delights, exhibiting truly original patterns, unusual movement and asymmetry of design, and a richness and maturity of color obtained by the masterful use of natural dyes. They transcend the decorative to become truly one-in-the-world art objects.

Bakshaish weavers employed both soft reds and navy tones for the base color of the field, with the use of ivory or sometimes, golden Camelhair grounds being particularly rare and beloved. Exceptional blues are a hallmark of these carpetswith hues of azure, turquoise, peacock and teal. Muted salmons, corals, buffs and yellows as well as rich spring to jade greens can also be found in abundance. Bakshaish carpets have a structure similar to others of the Heriz group, although their weave is usually somewhat finer.