Old World Classics make Mahindra-like rugs and carpets in India in about forty designs, with handspun wool and natural dyes, washed and finished entirely without chemicals.

As we have seen elsewhere, George Jevremovic of Woven Legends was influenced by Harald Bohmer of the DOBAG project. Teddy Sumner of Michaelian and Kohlberg was influenced by George Jevremovic. Haynes Robinson of Rugs by Robinson was influenced by both Teddy Sumner and George Jevremovic. So were many others, including a young man named Berislav Kuntic.

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More than 40 interesting pieces of Turkmen weaving, many quite old, should entice any San Francisco area local with an interest in Central Asian art to make it out to the showing, which runs until September 7.

Also on display are five embroidered women’s mantles (ornamental Turkmen robes) which are quite impressive.

In what was reputedly the biggest sale in Oriental and Persian rug history, Christie’s Auction house in New York sold a four-hundred-year-old silk Persian Isfahan carpet for a cool $4,450,500 earlier this month. The rug is 5′7″ by 7′7″ and is believed to have been made circa 1600.

The Persian art historian Arthur Pope has written about this particular piece. “Nothing further in the way of refinement, imagination, perfection of technique, or infinite charm of color was produced in this period,” he says, referring to the reign of Shah Abbas (1587-1629) of the Safavid dynasty.

The fact that the rug’s previous owner was Doris Duke might also have added to the stratospheric selling price. The price comes out to about $105,000 per square foot.

Two of the most eloquent gentlemen in the Oriental rug business are David Samad and Malcolm Samad. David and Malcolm Samad established Samad Brothers Oriental Rugs in New York in 1985 — an auspicious date, I believe, with which I associate the beginning of the renaissance of Oriental rugs — or when it began to show up in America, anyway.

For the first ten years or so the Samad brothers dealt in a variety of Chinese and Indian rugs. They were drawn to Jaipur in India largely because most other importers were not, and there, in the mid-1990s, they were introduced to what may be the only family in India producing Oriental carpets on their own initiative with natural dyes. The introduction resulted in a relationship that made Oriental rug history. From it were born the famous Dream Collection and Noble House carpets that rival any made in the past eighty years.

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You should know about the fine Indian carpets formerly imported by Rugs by Robinson. Some are still in the market, and they are beautiful and very well made.

They are unusual in that they combine natural dyes with machine-spun wool.

They have enough variegation of color (due to their vegetal dyes) to be full of character, but are so finished and ‘polished’ (owing to their mill-spun pile) that they fit into the most formal design situations.

Haynes Robinson, the firm’s founder, abandoned India as a source of rugs and is now only weaving in Turkey and Iran.

A familiar name resurfaces in India at this point in our story, Chris Walter. We have seen that Mr. Walter was the pioneer of natural dyeing in Pakistan and that, besides producing rugs in Pakistan, he created a natural dye production in Nepal — perhaps the only production there exclusively of natural-dyed rugs.

I only recently became aware that Chris Walter also brought to life naturally dyed rugs in India, beginning in 1992, just a year or two after Black Mountain Looms founded the first natural dye workshop there.

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Today, Black Mountain Looms no longer exists, but Teddy Sumner continues to produce Mahindras, the line of carpets formerly woven in India by Black Mountain Looms. Mahindras have been powerfully influential in the Oriental rug industry. They appeared at a time when Indian rugs were faulted for their lack of character — for being too regular, too stiff. Mahindras were truly revolutionary.

Often in designs found in no other carpets during the past sixty years, Mahindras are woven with natural dyes and hand-spun wool on cotton foundations. Warps are completely depressed. There are about 130 Persian knots per square inch. Most of their designs are based on unusual Persian city rugs, though a few seem to be based on old Indian carpets like Agras.

Today a few other manufacturers have captured the look of Mahindras, and others have knocked off their designs knot for knot. But Mahindras still are the leaders in a field created by Black Mountain Looms.

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Israeli carpets of the Bezalel school in Jerusalem display a unique blend of Jewish, Persian, Turkish and European styles in designs that focus on the Holy Land.

When most people think of Oriental carpets, Israel doesn’t come to mind. Yet there is a distinctly Jewish style of Oriental rug, developed by the arts-and-crafts-inspired Bezalel Academy in early 20th century Jerusalem.

The Bezalel Academy operated from 1906 to 1929, aiming to create a distinctly Jewish art form — one that fused European and Middle Eastern influences in a way that uniquely expressed the Jewish experience. The resulting body of work included paintings, etchings, metal, wood and leather-work, and some very interesting carpets.

The Bezalel rugs focus on Holy Land themes, and often depict sites with religious signifance. Perhaps the most iconic carpet design of the movement is a pictorial rendition of Rachel’s Tomb.

Although classic Israeli carpets are very expensive and hard to come by, a small batch of quality reproductions has recently entered the market. Woven Legends, a Turkish production that in our opinion makes some of the very best new handmade Oriental rugs today, has produced a limited set of these Jewish rugs. Not content to simply copy the designs of known Bezalel pieces, Woven Legends consulted with Anton Felton, a top scholar of Bezalel art and author of Jewish Carpets, to get the details of these rugs just right.

We think they’re pretty cool.

A reproduction of a Bezalel Israeli carpet depicting Rachel’s tomb, near Jerusalem.

Teddy Sumner and George Jevremovic were the first people to make Oriental rugs on a commercial scale in modern India with natural dyes and hand-spun wool. Together they formed a project called Black Mountain Looms.

Mr. Sumner studied painting as a fine arts major in Seattle (when pressed he admits to being ‘a painter with a small “p”) then joined his family’s carpet business, Michaelian and Kohlberg, in New York. His grandfather, Frank Michaelian, was active in the business in the ’20s and ’30s, when travel to and from the source of rugs was by steamship, and travel in the East itself was often by camel.
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