Weaving to the source

I had a serious case of carpet itch. No, not from re-enacting some torrid fireside scene out of a D.H. Lawrence novel, it was something closer to Kipling. I had, in recent months, hunted down a densely patterned, thick flat-weave kilim in Meknes, Morocco, a dusty, two-hour grand taxi ride from the far more treacherous carpet souks of Fez and installed it in my London living room. In India, I sortied from New Delhi to extract a fine, arterial-blood-red knotted runner from one of the many mini carpet factories in the back streets of Agra. This went into my bedroom, alongside my bed. But I had been only briefly sated and now felt a powerful urge to bag another carpet.

I have bought all my favourite furnishings on location; for originality and evocativeness it cannot be beaten. Some western carpet importers will tell you that buying abroad yields few bargains and that the risk of rip-offs is just too great but they have a vested interest in keeping their customers’ attention focused on their own, often rather unexciting, stock. My first rule of carpet buying, by contrast, is to head, forearmed with a little knowledge, for the source. Such expeditions are likely to be rewarding in all sorts of ways.

The ultimate destination for securing these compelling concentrates of beauty, lore and labour is Iran, the origin of weaving practices and patterns that have spread throughout the Middle East and to India, the Caucuses, eastern Europe and beyond. The former Persia remains the carpet lovers’ Mecca, the finest fruits of its looms probably still the finest in the world. But it is not the most accessible of countries and, given the recent conflict over its nuclear ambitions, you could bet a fairly expensive carpet that it will become even less so.

Romania, much maligned and ridiculed, was another country I considered for my next carpet fix. I do not know whether the late dictator Nicolae Ceausescu had his many, gaudy palaces lined with his countrymen’s excellent handwoven rugs but if his depredations did extend to the carpet industry he did not destroy it. Romanian rug production, born during the Ottoman occupation of the 16th and 17th centuries, consists largely of copies of classic Caucasian, Persian and Turkish designs but they are often of very high quality.

I could also have gone yet further east on my furnishing foray, to China, a country sometimes unfairly stereotyped for making everything cheaply. Unlike most of the other noteworthy carpets of the world, Chinese rugs use mainly indigenous patterns and styles rather than those derived from the Middle East. Their vigourous symbols and colours are the same as those that appear in Chinese textiles, wood carvings and ceramics. Floral figures predominate, while dragons, phoenix and other, non-mythical auspicious animals – the bat for luck, fish for abundance – are also common. Blue, ivory and yellow are the ruling colours. Chinese carpets mgiht be much less elaborate than those from other weaving centres but they include such singular features as circular – rather than rectangular – shapes and a striking sculpting or carving of the wool pile. The cold north of the country, where sheep are reared, is the place to seek out these radiant and intriguing artefacts.

If I were truly intrepid, I might have ventured into Afghanistan, the source of the finest of those carpets known as Bukhara – pricey but durable weaves, typically in an enveloping, warm red colour and distinguished by a traditional “elephant-foot” octagonal pattern. But even I was not carpet-crazy enough to go hunting in a war zone. A trek through the neighbouring Central Asian countries, following in the footsteps of the carpet-weaving Karakalpaks, Uzbeks, Turkmen and Kazakhs, also promised treasures. (Borat didn’t mention that these nomadic tribes create some of the rarest and most enigmatic carpets of all.) But I had only a week to spare for this latest trip and I had in mind more of a raid than an odyssey.

Moreover, as covetable as the more obscure carpets of the world might be, they rarely represent the forefront of technique. For such innovation, or rather renovation, one should, in fact, look to Turkey – even if it is these days a less exotic destination than the Kazakhstan steppe. Turkish weavers have led the revival of the old, natural dyeing methods after the oriental carpet world’s long infatuation with the chemical substitutes invented, in Britain, in the mid 19th century.

Finding the best of these rugs for one’s home means travelling well outside big-city boutiques. Istanbul, in this case, has no shortage of such Aladdin’s caves but the proprietors are mainly top-tier middlemen, who must themselves pay wholesalers in the weaving regions, and are understandably smug when they secure significant mark-ups from tourists. The rug aficionado should turn his compass to a more original source.

I knew what I wanted in Turkey: a rug, rather than a – terminologically speaking – larger carpet, to form the centrepiece of my study. Had I more time, I might have gone inland, towards the towns of Kayseri or Konya – the latter also the headquarters of the peaceable, whirling-dervish Islamic sect – in search of the highly individualised designs, much prized by collectors, of central Anatolia. On this occasion, however, I was bound for Ayvacik, a village a day south of Istanbul and a few miles in from the Aegean coast. A weavers’ cooperative using dyes derived only from animal, veget­able and mineral elements was the lure, as well as, I had heard, some nice unruined ruins.

The best carpet journeys are circuitous – the competition falls off along the route – and Ayvacik was no exception. “Canakkale! Canakkale! Canakkale!” is the finger-clacker-like cry of the coach drivers at the Istanbul depot advertising the first part of the peregrination. After the seven-hour ride along the western shore of the Sea of Marmara and then the car-boat crossing of the Dardanelles at Eceabat – interspersed by that touch of luxury travel Turkish-style, squirts of “refreshing” lemon cologne dispensed into your hands by glamorous onboard hostesses – many passengers halt. Canakkale is the best base from which to explore both the supposed relic of the supposed city of Troy and the first world war battlefields of Gallipoli and my fellow antipodeans are the main visitors to the latter site, commemorating the slaughter of their great-grandfathers at the hands of Turkish machine-gunners and – equally, we were told at school – cold-blooded British commanders.

This was interesting but I had other things on my mind so took a smaller bus straightaway to Ayvacik, two hours hence, and then – night falling and the dusty town itself having little to recommend it other than apparently glorious carpets – an even smaller bone-rattler onwards to the nearby ancient village of Assos. I lay in bed that night, in a tastefully converted former hovel, the odd local rug scattered about the room, anticipating a prodigious bout of haggling the next day. People do whole PhDs on particular carpet minutiae but even a smattering of knowledge will make your contest with a dealer fairer. A first question to consider of a carpet is its knot count, which you determine simply by turning it over. A count of 144 knots a square inch is considered a base mark of quality but you should not be overly enumerative as some desirable modern designs are coarsely knotted. Slightly irregular knotting, moreover, is not a defect but a characteristic of hand-manufacture; highly uniform rows might betray a dreaded machine-made carpet posing as genuine.

A second concern is material, namely that from which the carpet is really made. No bona fide dealer should reject your request to extract a thread from the carpet and set it alight. Wool will smoulder and emit an unmistakeable smell when lit, whereas artificial fibres will burst into flame. That oily ovine odour can also betray a supposed silk carpet as in fact made of boiled wool.

Then, there is the question of colour, whose credentials you can determine simply by rubbing the carpet with a damp cloth. Cheap, alkaline dyes will often leach. Synthetic colours – particularly oranges and pinks – will also tend to glare within the overall pattern; use your aesthetic judgment to spot them. Finally, the buyer should keep an eye out for “abrash” – a slight change in background colour along the length of a carpet that shows a change of skein. This desirable irregularity is now sometimes faked but it remains a worthy indicator of natural dyeing.

A crucial defence in the bargaining encounter is to view with clinical detachment the dealer’s readily wielded outrage – “You’re insulting me!” – at your suggestion of a price. He is not, contrary to appearances, expressing the least emotion but rather trying to manipulate your social embarrassment to his pecuniary advantage. In fact, the carpet vendors of the world are less wily – that orientalist slur – than contemptuous of the manifestation of western commodity fetishism known as fixed price and bartering with them can be a powerful lesson in the inner workings of profit. But, to my astonishment, it was a lesson the dealer in Ayvacik, who represented the carpet co-operative directly, refused to teach. Not only was she a she, which is very rare, but also, even more unusually, she would not bargain. The co-operative had apparently cut out anything else mediating the carpet and its purchaser along with its dismissal of middlemen.

I felt short-changed – I like to haggle – but at least this would save time. I had spent hours flipping through her rug stacks before I was left with two pieces I simply could not reject: a throw with an almost heraldic red design, bold against a black background, and a shimmering aqua creation with a repetitive abstract theme picked out in saffron. I wanted to take them both back home with me but, even at prices one-third of what I would have found elsewhere, knew I would ultimately have to abandon one.

I retired to Assos to ponder my decision among the ruins. I found the remains of this ancient Greek settlement, where Aristotle spent some fruitful years founding biology and botany and wedding the niece of its eunuch ruler, Hermias, to be remarkably free of touristic epiphenomena (as the great philosopher himself might have put it). There were some cheery, gap-toothed trinket hawkers and a bored toll guard up near the levelled temple of Athena but, further down the hill, beneath the modern village, I wandered for most of the afternoon alone, pocketing shards of two-millennia-old pottery exposed by the elements.

By the gymnasium I climbed to the top of the 50ft-high old city walls, some of the best preserved in the whole domain, for the view of Lesbos across the Gulf of Edremit. As I looked over the flat, indigo expanse of the Aegean, flecked with auburn reflections from the setting sun, it brought a similar pattern to mind. “Yes,” I thought, also now picturing my study at home in London. “It will have to be the blue one.”