I traveled to Chicago last Friday to venture into the renowned rug retailer, Oscar Isberian Rugs. When I walked through the door I was greeted by Brian Rojanasumaphong, a rug buyer and merchant for the company, travels the world in search of the crème de la crème of Rugs.
He mentioned that his trips to Turkey have been a magnificent adventure. While there, he tours rug weavers’ shops and villages in order to guide them on the changing American tastes. It’s the buyers who tell the weavers what colors might sell best in the states, and what type of rug people buy more often. This dialogue is one of the most important in the rug industry. He gave me a tour of the Oscar Isberian store near Chicago’s mecca of interior design, the Mercantile Mart, where the dark grey, industrial feeling walls made the hues of the antique carpets come alive. There were rugs that would suit any fancy with varied colors of tans, peaches, to bright greens.
Here we can see Brian standing next to a Knotisse Rug.
Knotisse is the rug manufacturer we plan to visit while on our trip. Knotisse recycles rugs by finding or buying old ones, unweaving them, rewashing and re-dying them, and later creates a new design to hand weave a reborn rug into. According to Brian, Turkish rugs are big sellers in the Chicago land area. We will find out more on how he buys them when we meet him again in Turkey.