This is a copy of a book review that I did for Rug News. I am not aware of what editorial changes were made by my editor when they published it. Most reviewers receive nice new (expensive) books from the publishers and write witty and entertaining reviews that serve only to attempt to show that the reviewer is smarter than the author. This is certainly not one of those reviews I am reviewing a battered and worn copy of a book my wife bought me a few years ago (I also do not feel terribly witty today). New when she bought it the book shows the signs of being used, read, studied and even loaned on countless occasions. Of all my rug books this one has to be my favorite: "The Carpets of Afghanistan" by Richard Parsons. Parsons takes the rugs from Afghanistan and does more to untangle them than any 5 books of which I can think.Parson's is one of those "Old Afghanistan Hands" who knows the country in such depth that he can explain it to the rest of us. Like some of the other "experts" I have written about such as Cecil Edwards and Jim Ford, Parsons was a buyer for OCM. As the Afghan buyer for a major rug company Parsons traveled Afghanistan on a regular basis. Parsons organized his book as he laid out his travels. The book is a rug tour across Afghanistan with chapters relating to market centers. If you remember that rule that Uncle Jimmy Keshishian taught me, the way to become an expert is to feel 10,000 of each kind of rug, you will understand the depth of knowledge a carpet buyer will gain traveling the same territory year after year seeing and examining thousands of carpets each trip. Parsons starts this journey in Kunduz in the eastern part of Afghanistan and then guides us through Mazar-I-Sharif and through Aq Chah, Shebererghan, Andkhoy, Daulutabad, Maimanna, Qaisar, Sharak, and then finishing up with the Baluch and related tribes in Herat. Parsons makes it understandable by using a market center rather than a tribal break down for the rugs and in the exceptions where it does not then Parsons explains the exceptions. He also mixes old and new samples so that we get a picture of changes in production in the twentieth century. What does this really matter to the guy selling the rugs? How can Richard Parsons make us any money? For years the rug trade has worked on two assumptions concerning the carpets of Afghanistan: One that everything is either an Afghan or a Baluch and two that there is no use in going any farther because it is too difficult to sort out the various types. By following Parsons book it becomes fairly simple to sort out seemingly very similar rugs. Take the Afghan rugs for instance. There is a world of difference between a simple rug like a Charchangi and a top rug like a Saltuq. But when we lump them all together as Afghans or Afghan Turkmen we drag them all down and make them less saleable. Face it, less saleable translates quickly into less profitable. Years ago a Portland Oregon rug dealer (James Opie) ran a series of very humorous ads in Oriental Rug Review offering to buy Shiraz Rugs and to sell Qashqai, Khamseh, Afshar, etc… Of course what he was doing was buying Southwest Persian rugs under their general trade name Shiraz and classifying them as to who they were made by. What was obvious to him was that while a rug may have an inherent value as to beauty, color, and construction there is a significant increase in value by adding a proper attribution. The market may have smartened up with Shiraz rugs because it is common to see Southwest Persians sold by tribal designation and it has become difficult to find really nice inexpensive older Qashqai rugs selling for "Shiraz" prices in the market. However there are vast quantities of "Afghans" in the market in new, old, and antique categories and at very good prices. Parsons gives us the key to start to turn less valued rugs whose value is in their color, beauty, condition and age and make them more valuable in the market by attributing them properly. One rather cynical old hand in the rug trade told me that most dealers would never get what I am talking about. He suggested that the belief is that "the value is in the rug" is so dominant in the rug business that many rug dealers would never believe me. That may be, but the truth has never suffered for lack of an audience. As I have mentioned from time to time I only sell over the Internet and by auction. There is nothing like a rug auction starting at a penny with no reserve to sort out the wheat from the chaff so to speak when it comes to the buyers behavior. When I get lazy and write less and put less information into the auction description the rugs sell for considerably less. Inversely when I use the auction as a teaching tool to educate the public about the rug, the country of origin, the weaver, and the weavers culture, then the rugs sell for much higher prices. One hint that may serve you well when you use this book to attribute a rug is that when you are trying to match a rug you have to a picture look to the borders first and to the field design second. Especially with Turkmen rugs we tend to look to the Guls and they are all so similar that it seems impossible to match up with one of Parson's pictures. However the borders are the key. Guls and in general field design changes in reaction to market pressures fairly quickly but borders are far slower to evolve. Of course structural details such as selvage and end finishes can be far better indicators but Parson's does not give much in the way of structural details. Perfect. no but certainly the best book on the rugs of Afghanistan. Well worth including in any short list of indispensable rug books. Oriental Rugs : The Rugs of Afghanistan by R. D. Parsons, Hardcover Revised edition (December 1992) Antique Collectors Club; ISBN: 1851491449 For Further Reading: Thanks and best wishes, J. Barry O'Connell Jr. |
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