THE 13-year-old import embargo on Iranian rugs is lifting, but that
doesn't excite anyone at the Bloomingdale's store in Manhattan.
''Embargo?'' said a rug salesman, referring to an open secret at
department stores nationwide. ''We've always had plenty. We buy them from
two vendors on 34th Street.'' Ranging from $500 to $50,000, brand-new
Iranian rugs -- ''we just got a shipment last week,'' he said -- are even on
sale this week.
Smuggled carpets from Iran have been pouring into the country ever
since the United States imposed a ban on Iranian products in 1987 in
response to clashes in the Persian Gulf. They come mainly from Canada, with
bogus paperwork to pass customs. ''The quantity of Iranian carpets coming
into this country will not change,'' said Leslie Stroh, publisher of Rug
News, a trade paper in New York. ''Just the statistics will. Yesterday they
were smuggled rugs; tomorrow they'll be 'legally entered' rugs.''
The government's decision to restore legal access to Iran's fabled
rug market -- whose time-honored traditions have defined both
connoisseurship and opulence -- is mostly drawing yawns all around. One big
reason, aside from the porousness of the American border, is that while Iran
long dominated the industry, it has spent the last 13 years sitting in the
penalty box. In the interim, India, Pakistan, Turkey, China and Egypt have
increased production of their handmade rugs, which are now often considered
better than Iran's. ''The whole business has flip-flopped,'' said
Graham Head, president of ABC Carpet & Home in New York. ''The goal of
Indian carpet makers 15 years ago was to look like the Persians. Now Iran's
goal is to copy the Indian carpets.''
Prices have reversed position as well. As an example, Mr. Head mentioned
a carpet currently all the rage: a classic Persian Heriz design made by
Afghan refugees in Peshawar, Pakistan, that sells for $12,000. He said the
same basic design, made in Iran, would be priced at only $2,000, and
would still be a tough sell because of bad dyes, bad washing and boring
execution. ''It's just incredible the amount of junk they've produced,'' he
said. ''They look like machine-made carpets.'' It is not only the countries
making the rugs that have changed, but American tastes as well.
''What I think of as the classic Persian rug -- vivid colors, high knot
count, intricate design -- is not what's selling,'' said Rosalind Rustigian,
owner of Rustigian Rugs in Providence, R.I., and president of the Oriental
Rug Retailers Association. ''What I'm selling are soft colors, flowing
designs with a patina of age and texture.''
Buyers are turning their noses up at the traditional Iranian Tabriz and
Sarouk styles, full of Oriental flower power or heavy red and blue,
reminiscent of Grandpa and Grandma's parlor. Now the fashion is for muted
colors. The top of the heap are Oushak and Agra designs. Originally derived
from designs made in Turkey and India, respectively, they are now copied by
weavers from Egypt to China, and are notable for their big geometric
patterns and bland colors -- salmon, cream, orangey brown and moss green.
All this borrowing of designs across borders has made the country of
origin almost irrelevant to buyers who once turned their noses up at
anything not labeled Persian (so called because of the famous weaving
centers in Persia, in the time before Iran formally existed as a
nation).
''What matters now is color and design, not country of origin,'' Mr. Head
said.
The New York interior decorator Kitty Hawks agreed, saying that she
foresees no stampede to Persian-made rugs by her customers. ''My clients
couldn't care less where a rug comes from,'' she said. ''On a purely
aesthetic basis we've gotten used to the Oushaks and Agras. They're much
easier to use than a formal-garden carpet that can take over the whole
room.''
Almost alone, auction houses are eagerly awaiting the end of the embargo.
They will now be able to sell in America the expensive antique Persian rugs
that have long been languishing in Europe or elsewhere, off limits to
collectors. (Purchases made abroad were denied entry into this country.)
In the interim, prices have risen steadily for America's inventory of
rarities: 16th- and 17th-century Persian carpets (ranging upward from
$50,000), small tribal rugs from the Caucasus mountains and the newly
popular antique Turkish Oushaks and Indian Agras that routinely fetch more
than $50,000. A large 19th-century Agra rug that sold at retail for $90,000
around 1990 brought $240,000 at Christie's in 1997.
Yet the middle of the antique market, made up of many Persian rugs woven
between 1870 and 1930, has declined about 50 percent in the last decade.
Lumped in here are the ubiquitous red and blue Sarouks and garden-variety
Tabrizes.
AN example is an intricately woven 4-by-6-foot Kirman rug that was made
in Iran around 1900 and is up for sale at Christie's next month.
Featuring a cartouche on an ivory field covered with twisting flowers, it
should bring $3,500 to $4,500, by Christie's estimate. ''Ten years ago it
would have brought $6,000 to $8,000,'' said Elisabeth Poole, the head of
Christie's rug department. ''It's just very Persian taste, and that's
completely out of fashion now.''
Brand-new Persian carpets have also dropped steadily in price as a result
of devaluations in both currency and quality. ''Iranian carpets are now half
to one-third the price they were in the early 1980's,'' said Steven Peykar,
one of three Iranian brothers who own the Nourison Rug Company in Saddle
Brook, N.J. The company, which is the country's largest importer of handmade
carpets from China, Pakistan and India, sells to department stores,
including Bloomingdale's and Macy's.
Before the 1987 embargo, the total wholesale value of Oriental
hand-knotted rugs imported to the United States was $500 million, said Mr.
Stroh of Rug News. (That's about $750 million in current dollars). Iran
had the biggest share of that market, 28 percent, followed by China and
India. When Iranian imports show up in the statistics next year, Mr. Stroh
said, they will probably place fourth or fifth -- about where they have been
all along during the embargo.
No one expects to see Iran back on top of the rug pile any time
soon, except perhaps at the ''going out of business'' sales held at airports
and hotels, which are prime arenas for cheating consumers. As Ms. Rustigian
put it, ''The lifting of the ban is a heyday for the G.O.B.'s, where the
consumer is just determined to buy an Iranian rug and doesn't know the
difference between one worth $3,000 or $30,000.''
Both now and in the long term, industry experts agree, Iran faces
tough competition. Iranian weavers will have to adjust their designs and
colors for a share of the American market. There is interest among buyers in
the possibility that the Iranians will make the changes, but no high hope.
Mr. Head, of ABC Carpet, is planning to fly to Tehran next week to look
at rugs. ''I'm ready to be very disappointed,'' he said. ''They need a
fresh, new approach and fresh, new designs that others will want to copy.''
And, he said, they will need money from joint partnerships with Americans.
''Then -- in two, three, four, five years -- you'll see wonderful things
being produced.''
''After all,'' he added, ''there wouldn't have been a Monet if there
hadn't been people to sponsor the arts.''
But India, Pakistan, China and Turkey may not be easy to push to the
background again. ''The quality has been degraded so much by the smuggled
goods,'' Mr. Stroh said. ''That's what's upsetting. There should be a
premium for rugs for Iran, but there's not. Iran will never
dominate the market again.''
Trade Secrets
IF you plan to buy an Oriental carpet from any of the dozen or so
rug-producing countries, from Iran to India, China to Pakistan, the
professionals say there is a quick way to tell a bad dye job, which is the
carpet equivalent of a lemon:
Rub a damp rag lightly over areas where the colors seem too deep or vivid
to be true. Excess dye will come off on the rag, indicating that the carpet
will bleed when it is cleaned.
Trust your eyes: if the colors seem ugly and harsh -- even to the
untutored eye -- chances are the dye job is bad.
To test for bleaching (which is done to give rugs ''instant age''),
separate fibers at the carpet's base. Just as with a bad hair job, the roots
will be darker. CHRISTIE BROWN
Organizations mentioned in this article:
Related Terms:
Carpets and Rugs; International Trade and World Market; Embargoes and
Economic Sanctions; United States International Relations; Smuggling
