Seychour Gallery Carpet, ca. 1910
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GUEST:
I bought it probably 40 years ago in Freehold, New Jersey, and I went to an antique store, and the woman was a bit of an eccentric. She was wearing a top hat. I bought the rug from her for probably $25, and she told me that she had used some rugs like it for drop cloths. She said she threw them out. So I went to the local garbage dump and I looked around for them and I couldn't find them.
APPRAISER:
And do you have any idea what type of rug it is?
GUEST:
I knew it was Caucasian, but I didn't know what kind it was. I thought it was a dragon carpet.
APPRAISER:
Okay, okay. Well, you are correct about the Caucasian attribution. You know, the Caucasus is a mountainous region between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea primarily populated by nomads. And they're known for weaving very graphic rugs like this using primary colors. This type of rug comes from the Kuba district, which is in northeast Caucasus, and it comes from the village of Seychour. And there are a few defining characteristics of this rug that make it a Seychour. First and foremost, it has a blue triple-chorded selvage, or edge finish. And then it has liberal usage of bright orange and bright red. Now, we date these rugs based on the dyes. Aniline or chemical dyes generally didn't appear in carpets until around 1900, so the fact that you have these hot reds and hot oranges, it more or less dates the rug to the early 20th century. And it's also very unusual because the standard type of carpet from this region is going to be a smaller carpet, perhaps four by six in size, or sometimes a runner size, but this rug is really in a gallery size, approximately five feet in width and 15 feet in length. You've got a little bit of bleeding of color over here. Some orange has bled into the white. And we have some areas that are torn.
GUEST:
Those rips were there when I bought it.
APPRAISER:
Now, you said that this rug has a water event in its history. Would you like to share that with us?
GUEST:
Hurricane Sandy. I had it in my garage underneath the house on Long Beach Island and I got 18 inches of water in my garage. I had a box of rugs. By the time I got to the box, it was probably 15 days.
APPRAISER:
Okay, so this rug was more or less saturated in water for 15 days. Yep. The retail value for this carpet in this condition would be $5,500.
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