Antique and collectors' rug buying

Three ages, three regimes of value

Before 1890, the value is certain and substantial: these pieces were knotted before dyeing was industrialised, and they are rare in good condition. Between 1890 and 1950, the value varies and is settled case by case, on the fineness, the origin and the condition. After 1950, it is mainly decorative, which does not mean nil.

The hundred-year threshold moves the piece into the antique category. It is a market threshold as much as a threshold of vocabulary: it changes the buyers the rug speaks to, and it changes the way it sells on.

The dyes date the rug

Up to the 1870s and 1880s, dyeing was done with plants and insects: madder for the reds, indigo leaves for the blues, Khorasan saffron for the yellows, oak gall and iron oxide for the blacks, cochineal for the carmines. Aniline dyes, imported from Europe, appeared in Turkey around 1882 and spread from there. Their presence dates the rug to after that break, and it explains most of the dye bleed seen today.

Blacks obtained with iron oxide leave another trace, a very legible one: over time the mordant attacks the wool and the black pile ends up sunken, shorter than the rest of the design. You feel the relief under the palm before you see it. It is a mark of age, not damage from use.

Abrash is not a fault

A lighter or darker horizontal band crosses the field: that is abrash. Knotting a large rug takes months, and when the first dye bath is exhausted the next one never gives exactly the same shade again. That banded variation is the signature of vegetable dyes and of work by hand.

Many sellers take it for fading and talk their own price down by apologising for it. It is the opposite: abrash is an argument for authenticity, it rules out a uniform industrial dye, and it counts in the rug's favour in our valuation.

Condition: what is forgiven, what weighs

On an antique piece, light wear is normal and even expected: a hundred-year-old rug that had never been used would be more suspect than a worn one. Reworked fringes, a re-overcast selvedge, a few old invisible menders are part of the object's life and are no trouble.

What does weigh heavily: a pile grazed down until the weft shows, multiple holes, generalised dye bleed, or a glued backing that makes the reverse impossible to read. The one-third rule serves as a guide: beyond a third of the market value, a restoration ceases to be economically defensible; below it, it defends itself.

One piece of advice that goes against our own immediate interest: do not have an antique piece hastily restored before selling it. A repair made with the wrong wool or with a chemical dye shows at first glance, cannot be undone, and costs more than it brings in. A rug restored faithfully, on the other hand, sells on: that is why we take that work on after the purchase.

Written valuation, collection, payment

Three photographs and the dimensions to the centimetre are enough to open the file, with a costed answer within 48 working hours. For a collection or a family piece we prefer to come out: age is judged by the feel of the foundation as much as by eye, and a cellar smell cannot be photographed.

We provide a written valuation stating the declared origin, the dimensions taken, the material of the pile and of the foundation, the condition observed and the range decided on. If you sell, collection is free and payment is made on the same day: cash up to €3,000, instant transfer or banker's draft above that (Article 67 of the Act of 18 September 2017 on the prevention of money laundering). The receipt sets out the detail piece by piece.