A lady named Charlene called me two months ago from San Diego to see if I could have a Persian carpet workshop for her Persian (Farsi) language students, all adults in my rug gallery. She wanted to expose her students to other artistic, cultural and historical aspects of Iran and the role Persian carpets could play a in this context. My answer was yes. We did the planning for last Saturday April 4th, 2011 from 10:00 am to 1:00 pm. We had 45 people who drove from San Diego to Los Angeles to attend and participate in the unique experience.

We started with playing three exclusive video clips on Qashqai rugs (13 minutes), Afshar rugs and kilims (9 minutes), and a video of Ardabil carpet cleaning (15 minutes). At the end of each video, we had questions and answers. I also has a power-point presentation on the oldest rug ever, the Pazyryk carpet which is being kept in the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg in Russia with the analysis of the design and dye. This rug is only 2500 years old! I showed some pictures of the biggest carpet made ever. This rug was made in Iran for a mosque in an Arabic country in the Persian Gulf. The size is around 65,000 square feet, a little bigger than a football stadium! We talked about rug buying and how prices are determined and many more subjects and issues. We had live rug repair and restoration show and these men and women asked whatever they wanted on carpets and related matters.

They all signed beautiful thank you cards and some wrote on the cards in Farsi. We appreciated them by having raffles and giving a 3′ x 5′ handmade rug and two rug books as the prizes. Everybody seemed to be very pleased and happy. I will write more on this carpet workshop in another post. My sons, my wife and a couple of staff accompanied me and helped me with all the work.

Dr. Khosrow Sobhe (Dr. Kay)
Certified Rug Specialist (CRS)
www.LosAngelesRugCleaning.com
www.RugIdea.com
Tel. 310-770-9085