I have always thought that old and antique rugs have so much to tell. For example when I see an old Hamedan rug in a customer’s house in Beverly Hills here in Los Angeles, I would love to know how and when this rug left the city of  Hamedan in north west Iran. It probably went to Tehran via a truck with so many other rugs. It was then sat for a while in a wholesale carpet store in Tehran bazaar. It was bought by a rug retailer and again it sat in his retail carpet shop in one of the streets of Tehran for a year. A customer saw and liked this village Hamedan carpet, bought and took it home. She used this small rug in her house for decades. It was worn out and she exchanged it with a brand new hand knotted Nain rug and paid the difference to the rug dealer who sold this Hamedan rug to a carpet exporter.

The hero of our story, the small Hamedan rug was taken to a rug cleaning factory to be washed and repaired along with many other Persian carpets to be exported to Hamburg in Germany.  A rug importer buys and receives a shipment in which this Hamedan carpet was in. He opens the bales in his Hamburg warehouse. He participates in Domotex exhibition in Hannover in north Germany and a rug importer from New York city who visited this major European carpet exhibition bought this Hamedan carpet along with many other rugs. This importer received the rugs in eight weeks in a container by ship. He transferred the bales of rugs to his New Jersey warehouse, opened them, put tags on the carpets and piled them based on the sizes and qualities.

In a few weeks, this carpet exporter participated in the Atlanta rug show which is held twice a year in July and January. This Hamedan rug was sold with many other pieces of carpets to a rug dealer on La Cienega Blvd. in Los Angeles. The rug sits and stays there for a few months. A designer sees the rug, likes it and takes it to her customer’s home for approval. They have the rug on the floor in their living room for a few days and decide to buy it. The size is right, the color matches the interior of the room and the price is appealing.

The customer used this beautiful Hamedan rug on the floor for many years. It gets dirty and she decides to have it professionally cleaned. The fringes are also damaged and need repair and securing. She looks up online and finds our company. Here I am in her house looking at this Hamedan carpet to take it for cleaning and repair, but for a few moments, I flashed back and took a decades long journey to Hamedan, Tehran, Hamburg, New York, New Jersey, Atlanta and finally Los Angeles. Yes, mam, it will take seven days to clean this rug and we need 2-3 days for the repair.

I took the rug to our carpet gallery while I was thinking to myself that if this rug could talk, what a tale it would tell!

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