Their goal: Get a great rug and not get walked all over

BEFORE my recent trip to India, I asked two rug importers in the U.S. about reputable carpet merchants in the places I planned to visit.

One dodged my request altogether. The other tried to dissuade me from buying anything. “You would be wiser to buy in the U.S. from a merchant you trust,” said an e-mail from John B. Gregorian, author of “Oriental Rugs of the Silk Route” and president of Arthur T. Gregorian Oriental Rugs, a store in Newton Lower Falls, Mass. “Choose your Oriental rug dealer before you choose your Oriental rug,” he said.

I’ve bought various rugs that way, so I understood his advice, although I thought it self-serving. What’s more, several rugs I had acquired from a New York store were made in India. Because my husband, Ken Stern, and I were planning a family vacation to the north-central part of that country, a rug-production center, it seemed logical to make our next purchases at the source.

Much of what I learned about buying rugs in India would apply to Oriental rugs made in Pakistan, Afghanistan or other countries. (

Having tried without success to get leads here, we decided to scout out places after we arrived in India. Our challenge, when we traveled there in December, was to find rugs of higher quality and lower prices than we could get back home. To do that, we had to avoid tourist establishments and seek out stores where affluent Indians shop. I lined up a carpet authority in the U.S. to evaluate our finds, for better or worse, when we returned.

We traveled through the state of Rajasthan, where massive fortresses stand testimony to the lavish tastes of the Mogul and Rajput rulers who once dominated India.

Examples of the gigantic -- at least 10 by 30 feet -- carpets that furnished their palaces are displayed at the City Palace Museum in the bustling city of Jaipur. The rugs we sought were postage-stamp size by comparison, about 5 by 8 feet, and 4 by 6 feet, along with a couple of runners to fit the irregularly shaped staircase landings of our three-story brownstone in Brooklyn, N.Y.

Nor could we expect to match the muted ruby reds, celadon greens and deep indigos of the 17th century relics, all of which were made of natural dyes derived from plants and insects. Modern chemical dyes produce much brasher colors.

Nand Kishor Chaudhary, the owner of Jaipur Carpets in Jaipur, an important rug market, relies on a network of weavers in villages throughout Rajasthan to produce the rugs he sells, mostly for export. We found Chaudhary through a photo credit in the book “Indian Carpets: A Hand Knotted Heritage,” by Asha Rani Mathur, which we bought in a hotel gift shop.

There’s no sign in front of the new three-story building his business occupies in the middle of a dusty industrial district, a 20-minute drive from the center of Jaipur. On the way there, we observed people toting rugs and skeins of yarn on the backs of bicycles and motorcycles, and the ubiquitous sacred cows, which share the streets throughout India.

Jaipur Carpets is a beehive of activity, with workers in a central atrium putting the finishing touches on carpets delivered from the villages. Designs are computer-generated versions of classical patterns, in the reds, blues, greens and golds that appeal to Western tastes.

In the showroom, Chaudhary offered us Indian hospitality -- tea, cookies and nuts -- without any of the hard sell, and he had an ideal solution to our quest for hallway runners: rugs made to our dimensions.

We chose two patterns: one a classic Jaipur design with flowers and medallions and the other in what looks like an American Arts & Crafts style.

Prices, based on the tightness of the weave, were $15 a square foot for the first rug, which had 140 knots per square inch, and $10 per square foot for the second, which had 81 knots per square inch. The total tab to cover about 64 square feet of floor was $937. The rugs would take about five months to weave.

As the pricing structure suggests, knot count is one indication of the value of a rug. Rugs with higher knot counts and a tighter weave (visible by looking at the back side of a rug) involve more work and are generally more expensive. Although there are no absolute measures of what an Oriental carpet is worth, one of moderate quality would typically have a knot count of about 300 knots per square inch.

To some extent, knot count depends on the pattern -- a more intricate one tends to require more knots -- and knot count alone shouldn’t dictate a purchase. For example, although the runners we ordered had relatively low knot counts, we chose them based on other measures of value: the rugs’ good-quality wool, colors, designs and overall attractiveness. We also liked the fact that they were durable enough for high-traffic areas and well priced for nonstandard sizes.

Although bargaining is part of the Indian culture, Chaudhary had the home-court advantage. We had spent two hours making our selections, and he knew we weren’t prepared to walk away from the purchase. He wouldn’t budge on price.

Still, he agreed to terms that were more important to us: payment by credit card, no charge until the rugs arrived in the Atlanta wholesale store his daughter runs, free shipping and the right to return the rugs from New York to Atlanta for any reason (at our expense) and get a full refund.

When we later shopped for rugs in Delhi, we compared the prices at Jaipur Carpets with those at Obeetee, a store recommended by the Oberoi Hotel, where we were staying. The price for similar custom-made runners was three times more than we paid.

Another lead from Mathur’s book was Gulam Mohidin & Son, in a residential neighborhood of Delhi. There, Mohomad Amin, a third-generation rug dealer who runs the enterprise with his daughter Sarvat, rolled out some choice items from his collection of beautiful but threadbare old carpets. They were not for sale -- Amin uses them as prototypes for the carpets he has manufactured in Kashmir.

Each old rug had a story: One was acquired from a widow who left it in the attic of her Mumbai (Bombay) house, where it suffered water damage during a monsoon. Another was saved from fire at the company’s Srinagar headquarters when Amin’s father heaved it out a window into the Jhelum River. For our bedroom at home, we paid $1,200 for a 4-by-6-foot, finely woven (342 knots per square inch) garden design in shades of green and blue with a center field of four birds perched among branches of a tree. We also bought a similarly sized Kashan, a floral medallion design named for a city in what was once Persia, in rich shades of gold and red that matched our living room (360 knots per square inch, $1,100). Here, too, the dealer refused to negotiate prices.

Still hoping to buy at least one old rug, we went to Galleria June 1st, whose ad we spotted in the monthly Delhi Complete City Guide and Magazine. Harash Talwar, a partner in the business, enlightened us about the widespread practice of washing new rugs with acid, scrubbing them with sandstone and dyeing their fringes with tea to make them look old. After Talwar was quite open about his sideline business, performing this service for tourist shops, we looked extra closely at the two “old” carpets -- he would not estimate their age -- we ended up buying from him.

When we returned home, we asked Sam Noori, a carpet consultant and dealer with Zara Rugs Gallery in East Hanover, N.J., to evaluate our haul. Without telling him what we had paid for the rugs, we asked him to appraise their quality, attach a U.S. retail value to each and not to spare our feelings.

Noori praised the weaving in the rugs from Galleria June 1st but questioned their age. A 5-by-8-foot, geometric tribal design purchased for our son’s room for $700 was “a good copy of an old rug,” Noori said. The weave was too tight for it to be more than 5 years old, and without any signs of repair, it looked “too perfect.”

When he estimated the price at $1,000, we breathed a quiet sigh of relief.

But Noori hesitated over another purchase from Galleria June 1st -- a 4-by-6-foot Kashan with a teardrop center medallion. It seemed to have been re-bound in spots where the edges of an old rug might have frayed.

On the other hand, what we took to be abrash (shading in old or tribal carpets that results from the way different wools absorb the dye) might have been the result of acid wash applied vigorously to the red center field, Noori said. Although he wouldn’t state any conclusions about whether the rug was really old, he priced it at $500 -- exactly what we had paid.

Noori admired the tight weave, softness, caliber of the wool and durability of the rugs from Gulam Mohidin & Son, but it seems we paid dearly -- about double what Noori estimated the reproductions were worth -- for the privilege of seeing Amin’s collection and listening to his stories.

How did we make out? Buying carpets in India was no bargain, but we brought home some beautiful souvenirs, didn’t make a huge investment and thoroughly enjoyed the hunt.

Ultimately, the best gauge of a fair price in the rug bazaar is what a particular carpet is worth to you.

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Shopping tips

Some advice on buying a good Oriental rug:

Stay away from merchants recommended by hotels, taxi drivers and tour guides. Their commission, which will be added to the price, can be as high as 50%.

Look for merchants whom local people patronize. Get recommendations from well-heeled Indians you meet in your travels, and shop in residential parts of major cities, where the rents and the prices are lower. (Check ads in magazines and tourist guides against a map of the city you are visiting.)

Turn a rug over and examine the tightness of the weave and how close together the knots are. Rugs with higher knot counts and a tighter weave involve more work and are generally more expensive.

To test whether a rug is really made of silk -- and not cotton or synthetic material -- ask the merchant to pull a thread of each color and light them with a match. Only the silk will quickly ignite and then shrivel into a ball.

-- Deborah L. Jacobs

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Fiber options

WHERE TO SHOP:

Galleria June 1st, D-962 New Friends Colony, New Delhi; 011-91-11-55659325.

Gulam Mohidin & Son, C-17 east of Kailash, New Delhi.

Obeetee, G-54 Connaught Place, New Delhi; (866) 623-3833 or 011-91-11-23711831, www.obeetee.com.

Jaipur Carpets, G 250 Mansarovar Industrial Area, Jaipur; 011-91-141-2398948 or Jaipur Rugs Inc., 1500 Southland Circle, Suite H, Atlanta, Ga.; (404) 351-2360, www.jaipurrugs.com.

TO LEARN MORE:

“Oriental Rugs of the Silk Route: Culture, Process, and Selection,” by John B. Gregorian.

“Indian Carpets: A Hand Knotted Heritage,” by Asha Rani Mathur (about $12, Rupa & Co., 2004).

“The Illustrated Buyer’s Guide to Oriental Carpets,” by J. R. Azizollahoff ($39.95, Schiffer Publishing, 2002).

-- Deborah L. Jacobs