The Art of Business
Cutting a Rug... at Silken Wool
by Susan Piperato; photos by Megan McQuade

I first came upon the woven poetry of the Persian carpet when I was a child. There were plenty of magic carpets in the tales of the Arabian Nights—those captivating stories of luck, magic, romance, purity, and greed through which American children used to first encounter the Middle East. And then there was the Persian carpet that covered the floor of my great-grandmother’s dining room. I was as captivated by the stories of beautifully colored Persian carpets that flew as I was by the fringed carpet upon which stood my great-grandmother’s then-seemingly massive Victorian table with its heavy, claw-foot legs. When I was very young and inevitably became restless during holiday meals, I was allowed to disappear beneath the table to play on that Persian carpet while the adults finished eating. There I’d sit in the dark cavern created by all the long legs and the linen tablecloth, listening to the adult conversations overhead and tracing the carpet’s filigree patterns with my finger. The carpet was dark—blue and red, mostly—with black and white lines that interlaced and curled around each other like the barbs of peacock feathers. Whatever was going on above, it was always quiet under my great-grandmother’s table, and I was able to be transported into a state of reverie not unlike the one I’d fall into automatically when I was being read to, or later when I learned to read myself. My great-grandmother’s carpet was as mysterious, miraculous, and wonderful as the jewels that Ali Baba found in the cave of the Forty Thieves.

Although I’ve yet to find the wherewithal to own one, I have coveted Persian carpets all my life—not for their material value or legendary durability, or even so much for their incomparably intricate beauty, but for the dreamlike state induced by gazing at their intricate patterns. At Silken Wool Fine Collectible Rugs, a shop that opened last summer in Warwick, I was pleased recently to fall once again into such a state during my visit. Once again I was captivated by Persian rugs, not only from studying their rich colors, symbols, and patterns, but also from listening to proprietor Behrooz Ghorbanian’s passionate explanations of each carpet’s narrative design, method of production, and regional origin.

A native of Iran who emigrated to the US in 1975, two years before the Iranian Revolution, Ghorbanian and his wife Susan Chakamian decided to open Silken Wool against the conventional wisdom, but have found immediate success. “We went against everybody’s opinion,”
Ghorbanian said. “People said don’t open a shop in a small town. They told us don’t bring in pieces that can’t reproduced if somebody wants a bigger or smaller rug. And they said stay with muted colors and more subtle designs or Americans won’t like them. But as you can see, there is no subtlety here. We took a great risk in bringing in the most radical, innovative pieces of Persian rug design—I have pieces that are rare even in Iran—and people are loving them and buying them.” In fact, the shop has already become so popular that word-of-mouth advertising among rug collectors has built Ghorbanian and Chakamian a solid clientele throughout the tri-state area, as well as attracted several European customers visiting New York, and even a buyer from Alaska.
Ghorbanian, who is, incidentally, a graduate student in philosophy by night at the New School for Social Research, credits Silken Wool’s success with the store’s “very reasonable prices, especially compared to New York’s,” as well as his and Chakamian’s commitment to selling only “rugs with integrity.” Ghorbanian has been collecting rugs since reaching adulthood, having developed a love for them, he said, at the age of five, when he was playing on a rug and overheard his father and uncles discussing the rug’s design and origin.

The problem with the Persian rugs currently being marketed by major American dealers, says Ghorbanian, concerns their authenticity of design. Because many Americans are unable to bring rugs out of Iran, the product line has become “soured,” he said. “As a result of a lot of Americans not being able to export the rugs, they decided on certain popular designs and began having variations of these made in India, China, and Pakistan. So largely, what comes to the US are copies of Persian rugs whose designs have been varied, not by artists, but by administrators, and produced by unskilled labor. As a result, the market is now flooded with X, Y, and Z versions of Persian designs. There is no pride involved in any aspect of the production, not for the work or for the art.”

In contrast, Ghorbanian and Chakamian travel within Iran every six months, seeking out rugs that are no less than “truly incredible pieces” of “fine art that has a use” and “truly reflects life and culture and history in Iran.” Beside the rugs’ beauty, Ghorbanian says he appreciates the fact that each rug is “an amazing communal creation,” involving a group of people, a village, or a single extended family in raising and shearing the sheep to dying the wool, designing the rug, spinning the wool, and weaving. Each region produces its own traditional style of rugs, from the colors—which vary wildly and surprisingly compared to standard Persian rugs—composition, and symbols used, to the number of knots per square inch (up to 650) and the way in which the knots are made, thus painstakingly reflecting the various ways of life and events in Persia. Individual artists, small families seeking extra income, and major rug manufacturing families design the pieces, which are created to narrate the life of a place, for artistic self-expression, or for the exchange of ideas. Among Silken Wool’s wide range are lavar rugs made in the Kerman region, which feature elaborate, highly rendered and textural silk floral designs; more medieval style Kurdish floral rugs still made by the nomadic people of the Hamadan region; Qoms; desert and sky colored rugs; traditional Kamash rugs; traditional Kamash rugs and rugs featuring the tree of life and garden motifs. Some of the more interesting rugs on display include one from the Tabriz region featuring the tree of life whose elements have been separated and placed next to each other in panels. Another rug from Hariz, produced after the Iranian Revolution, features a traditional Islamic altar that incorporates the ancient Persian columns of the Sasani period, yet contains no religious signifiers. “This one is odd,” Ghorbanian noted. “It was made under the Islamic Republic, using Islamic concepts, yet it includes new elements rather than traditional ones. This artist was working to expand on concepts. I think he was expressing resistance.”

The rugs on offer range in price from $500 to $20,000. Besides offering an abundance of contemporary and up to 200-year-old rugs featuring both traditional and radical designs and colors, Silken Wool includes antique rugs ranging from 2,000 to 4,000 years old, selected and verified for authenticity by an elderly friend of Ghorbanian who was the master curator at the Persian Rug Museum in Tehran. Customers may also commission rugs to be made at fine rug design shops in Iran. The rest of the rugs available at Silken Wool are purchased by Ghorbanian and Chakamian at the Bahraz market, directly from families or from tiny, out of the way stalls. In the future, Ghorbanian also hopes to include rugs containing the poetry of Sufi mystic Hafiz.

“This is really a journey for us,” Ghorbanian said. “It’s all about what we’ve seen, and what this whole thing has brought us to be. It’s amazing that in this time and age, there are people who take pride in production. It isn’t just about the money, for them or for us. The most satisfying thing for me is to tell people the stories in these rugs and to run them through seeing them for the first time.”

Throughout the month of December, Silken Wool is hosting several events and offering special opportunities. First, two percent of all proceeds from the holiday sale (up to 35 percent off the price of a wide range of rugs) will be donated to Unicef and Winslow Therapeutic Center. For Chronogram readers who purchase a rug priced at $900 or more, Silken Wool will provide one night’s lodging at one of Warwick’s historic inns and bed and breakfasts. Also, running from December 1 to 22, the shop is hosting a silent auction of several selected rugs now on display. Silken Wool Fine Collectible Rugs is located at 56 Main Street, Warwick, NY 10990. Special holiday hours are Monday through Saturday, 10am-8pm, and Sunday 10am-5pm, or by appointment. For more information, contact the shop at 988-1888 or send a fax to 988-1889. Individual rug designs may be viewed at www.SilkenWool.com.