The Oriental Carpet Buyer

I found this on travel writer Dave Fox’s site:
After nearly three months of travel, alone, on a ridiculously tight budget, I was sick of being politically correct. I had been ripped off – twice in two hours. And not knowing what else to do, I blamed the Turks. I blamed the entire country because in […]

[Read more →]

Found this amazing deal on craigslist: a carpet sale, 70% off suggested retail… bla bla bla. The best part:
Location: Volcano

[Read more →]

Spring appears to be a time of cleaning not only in American culture, but in traditional Persian culture as well. Nowruz, or the Iranian New Year, is celebrated on the first day of Spring. And carpet cleaning appears to be one of the traditional tasks along with planting vegetables and doing general house cleaning. To […]

[Read more →]

Hearing the news of falling stocks today, after yesterday’s slight come-back, worried me further more. Winter is not a major season for selling carpets, but when stocks start to drop it becomes even more difficult. Most of my customers have much of their fortunes invested in stocks and when they see that those are not […]

[Read more →]

I believe this is a parody…

[Read more →]

I found this great post about how a sales trainer was convinced into buying a carpet while in Istanbul. It is a great example of the lengths that some shops will go to and of the techniques used by salesmen in general:
Owner: “Is there any price, where, if you could own this rug […]

[Read more →]

My son told me a story today. He was visiting Ephesus, the ancient Anatolian city near Selçuk, Turkey. There he met Jeyhan, a.k.a. “Jimmy”, who runs Jimmy’s Place, formerly the Artemis Guest House. Jimmy, who also sells carpets, had a great story to tell my son about how one of his customers was almost […]

[Read more →]

Art collector Rainer Kreissl who died in 2005 left behind him an unresolved argument. Should what most people call “oriental” carpets be called so? Here is the article in the Turkish Daily Times:
As he became an expert on Anatolian village rugs, and wrote about them, he urged Westerners to stop regarding Eastern weavings as “Oriental,” […]

[Read more →]

This video is a bit old, but in case you have not seen it, here is an advertisement for Persian carpets. I guess this is oriental carpet shopping in dreamland.

[Read more →]

(You can tell by the unnatural colors of the carpet that it doesn’t really matter if you spill on it.)

[Read more →]