Oriental Rug Seminar with Doug Lay
The final course for our Summer Antiques Seminar was two days with Doug Lay, one of the best educators and most delightful persons anywhere! The seminar was sold out and most who attended were ready for more next year–Doug, however, says that like pregnancy he needs a few years to forget how grueling 14 hours of teaching in two days is! Having prepared a superb booklet to guide us through his topic, he added a fascinating array of slides to make each point come alive, whether dining in the tent of his nomadic hosts seated on carpets surrounded with woven hangings, or riding his camel across a mountain pass–rugs were alive and palpable!
I can ony share some slides of our courses but perhaps one day I will bug Doug for a few downloaded slides to share as well.
Day Two--Hands On
While day one was all slides, tying symmetrical and asymmetrical knots, learning a warp from a weft, a depressed warp from a non-depressed, etc–day two was in The Persian Carpet oriental rug gallery. Here Doug is pointing out intricate details of a carpet–and of course it is all about what the back of the carpet reveals!
Noses to the carpet!
I was warned about no butt shots of the participants but even I have no idea who this is–so it just has to make a great point about getting down and really eyeballing the construction of a carpet!
A Shop Full Of Students and Carpets
The Persian Carpet is a visual feast–in the background on the walls are large modern handmade oriental carpets–the pieces that are small back left are frighteningly perfect newly made copies of antique pieces. While there are good keys to spotting these when new, Doug’s comment was he feels for the appraisers, dealers, and collectors 25-50 years from now. Interestingly these exceptional modern works of this traditional art are as expensive as what they copy, for the most part!
Doug also provided a great bibliography and had all of the books on display so students could examine them and be sure of what expenditures they might wish to make in building their personal libraries.