Why Turkish Hand-Made Carpets ?
As I stated earlier on how I became interrested in hand-made Turkish Carpets;I decided that I needed more information to be able to help my guests when they asked me about quality and price differences.I went to the Grand Bazaar of İstanbul and asked some shop keepers if they would teach me about the art of making carpets by hand in my country.They were rather reluctant giving the secrets of their trade to the public and they told me they would teach me if I would work for them.
However my major concern was to promote Turkish tourism so I went to London,England and bought two suitcases full of books and studied them on my own in the next four years. In 1973 I was in the Grand Bazaar with my group giving information on carpets and by divine coincidence the same shop keeper must have overheard what I was explaining and later on he made me an offer for giving a lecture to his staff who were starting to be the next generation sales force.So in the last 44 years I have lectured in numerous establishments and thought them how to win peoples hearts while they were making a living.To be a successfull salesperson one has to be honest and never lie. Success takes years and it is a marathon so patience is a must and the guest is not always right.This may be contrary to the general rule of thumb when you may hear a sales person say’’the customer is always right’’ and let me give you a relevant example to explain what I mean:People who are looking for a hand-made carpet usually enter into stores with textile pieces belonging to their furniture and curtains so they try to match them.Especially in todays consumer trends we seem to change our furniture once every ten to fifteen years and redecorate our homes more frequently.You may do so with machine made rugs as we expect a fairly good quality machine-made carpet to last some twenty years while a fairly good quality hand-made carpet should last a hundred years at least as long as you have the know-how of how to take good care of your hand-made carpets.Later on I will give you some information which will come handy as cleaning instructions so you can get better mileage out of your truly hand-made Turkish Carpet.
Here is my offer to everyone whether you are a home owner or a decorator; start with a good quality Turkish hand-made carpet and decorate your house around it.It will probably not only outlive the furniture and the people using them but also the house itself.For people who are in the real estate business do the future owner a favour by placing an Oriental hand-made carpet in an empty house and advise the client to decorate around a hand-made carpet that they would like so it will enhance the value of the house for as long as they live.You may disagree with me about how long a good quality hand-made Turkish Carpet would last;in that case please check on-line the collection on display at the moment in the Islamic Fine Arts Museum in İstanbul.Some Selçuk Turkish Carpets,18 pieces big and small,have come from the Alaattin Mosque and Mausoleum in Konya from 1221,so it makes them 796 years old...
If you want to spend wisely start with a double knotted original hand-made Turkish Carpet and let your future generations be thankful to you for the investment you are about to make...That is why ‘’the customer is not always right’’.Yes there is more publicity on Persian-Iranian hand-made carpets which are generally single knotted however on one of my videos when I gave a seminar in February 2017 at the Swiss Hotel to WBAF;you will find my explanations regarding the comparison between Turkish and Iranian Carpets.On another video about Persian Nomadic Zollanvari Gabeh group of rugs on 41 minutes 23 seconds in English subtitles it says’’Turkish knots are better than other knots because it makes the carpet much tighter’’.Yes with double knots you need more labour and material which will increase the price but will give you a longer lasting durability and that is what makes Turkish Carpets Collectables.
Please do not misunderstand what I am telling you now as there are also many Turcoman Iranian carpets that were made by using the Turkish double knots and they have in recent years been sold at record prices in auctions and I will later on give two of those as examples.(Please refer to section Carpets ).