Page:The Practical Book of Oriental Rugs - Lewis - 1911.djvu/227

THE PRACTICAL BOOK OF ORIENTAL RUGS sometimes disagree. Importers and dealers in Oriental rugs would find it greatly to their advantage if they had a strict rug nomenclature based on facts and if they discountenanced everything in the trade which tended towards charlatanism or inspired distrust in the minds of buyers.

In the classification to follow we will consider rugs from a geographical stand-point.

To begin, we will consider them in the following order: 1st, Persian ; 2nd, Turkish ; 3rd, Caucasian; 4th, Turkoman; 5th, Beluchistan; and 6th, Chinese.

No reference will be made to Indian rugs for the reason that, outside of the fact that they are made in India, they can nowadays hardly claim a right to be classed as Oriental products, inasmuch as they are wholly modern creations made merely upon a trade basis, often by machinery, and after designs furnished by American and European designers. In addition to the little we have to say of the Chinese products we will refer our readers to the recent and most excellent work of Mrs. Mary Churchill Ripley, "Antique Chinese Rugs," which is, we believe, the only book ever written on the subject. 162