Thursday 30 January 2020

A magic carpet tour

This week I joined in the SWEA visit to the Center of Original Iranian Carpets, here in the city of Abu Dhabi.


I know absolutely nothing about carpets, so I was well keen to go. This place is the oldest carpet shop in Abu Dhabi having been open since the 1970s, having sold rugs to several notable UAE Royals - so what better place to go!



We were greeted by the owners, a brother and sister, and Mr Dawood Hossein-Zadeh himself gave us a short lecture about Persian rugs - their history, how they are made, what they are made of. It was very interesting, he told us all about the technical information, about the different patterns and colours, and about the rugs artistic value.



This gallery is home to over 5,000 hand-picked, and hand-made of course, carpets in all sizes, colours and price ranges. There certainly were some rugs here you would never be able to sell anywhere else in the world - like the silk rug behind Mr Dawood in the photos, over 4 x 4 meters large... imagine the price of that!

 

We were told the four things to look for when buying a carpet: age, colour, material and weave - the number of knots per square meter; and how to make sure it's a hand-made carpet and not machine woven. 


Of course the carpet I liked the most out of all of the ones he had on show for us this particular day, was the most expensive..! A small but breathtakingly beautiful turquoise silk rug fetching around 20,000 AED! An investment, for sure, like a piece of art.

This rug below was like a magic carpet. No it couldn't fly, but when you moved around the carpet and looked at it from one side to the other, it changed colour! 



A big group of SWEA ladies this morning! We went for lunch after as well, a really lovely morning!

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