ei Te 
Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art 
AMERICAN 
HOMES AND GARDENS 
December, 1911 
‘The Ardebil Mosque Rug, formerly in the Yerkes collection, is one of the three world-famous rugs from the mosque at Ardebil, in northern Persia 
Oriental Rugs and How to Select Them 
worth it. 
lack artistic perception. 
But if art value were to be 
disregarded, and the palm 
in to stay. 
entirely 
awarded on the basis of use value alone, 
the domestic brussels would easily win 
out. Of course, in buying rugs or other 
furnishings for the home, few are so 
stupid as to seek durability without re- 
gard for looks or style, any more than 
a woman buys a hat because the milliner 
assures her it will outlast all other hats. 
But inasmuch as the manager of an 
Oriental rug department in New York 
city has seen fit in his newspaper adver- 
tising to scoff at art value in Oriental 
rugs, and as his example has been fol- 
lowed to some extent in other cities, 
it seems important here to reiterate 
what every honest dealer knows and ad- 
mits—that it is the art value of Orien- 
tal rugs which makes people willing to 
pay so much more for them, and that if 
all persons in the United States suddenly 
became art-blind, like the manager men- 
tioned above, New York city would 
cease to be a great Oriental rug market. 
A visit to the Metropolitan Museum 
of Art, New York city, is very instruc- 
RIEN TAL rugs cost from three to ten times 
as much as domestic wiltons. 
But not to persons who utterly 
It is true that the 
use value of Oriental rugs is great. 
wear well, because every knot has been put 
By George Leland Hunter 
And they are 
They 
1 a RS IS 
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ee 
An Anatolian Mat of this sort, woven in 
Asia Minor, twenty by thirty inches, can 
be bought for less than a dollar. It is 
effective in rugged surroundings, but not 
durable nor to be recommended 
tive on the subject of art values in Oriental rugs. 
amples shown there are from one hundred to four hundred 
years old and all of distinguished excellence as regards de- 
sign and execution. 
Ardebil Mosque rug, formerly a part of the famous Yerkes 
collection, and the smallest of three rugs sold to a Sul- 
The ex- 
One of the most remarkable is the 
tanabad dealer thirty years ago, when 
repairs to the mosque at Ardebil, in 
northern Persia, made new floor cov- 
erings necessary. The largest of the 
three rugs was the famous one now in 
the Victoria and Albert Museum at 
South Kensington and often called the 
most important Oriental fabric in the 
world. 
The Ardebil rug at the Metropoli- 
tan Museum, here illustrated by cour- 
tesy of the Museum authorities, is mar- 
velous for design and color and will 
repay long and careful study. It was 
woven in the Sixteenth Century, is ten 
feet and eleven inches long by five feet 
and ten inches wide, and has a woolen 
pile of 485 knots to the inch, tied into 
a silk web. ‘The field shows ten groups 
of struggling animals (dogs and bears) 
in yellow and blue on wine-red ground. 
Boars and tigers and a wealth of flow- 
ers and foliage fill the rest of the spaces. 
The main border is in blue, with outer 
border in red and inner border in cream. 
But no description can even suggest the 
softness and delicacy of the color tones 
