GUEST: I chose it out of my mother-in-law's estate about five years ago. And it originally came from Shreveport, Louisiana, and that's all I know about the rug.
APPRAISER: Well, the rug is a Persian rug made in what is now Iran. And it's made around 1890 to 1900. It's called a Laver Kirman. It's an extremely fine rug. And you'll notice that if you look at the back of the rug, it has very fine knots so that you can see the pattern very clearly. This rug has approximately 300 knots per square inch. So that's a tremendous amount of workmanship. So, for this type of rug, it's important for it to have that degree of fineness, because they have attempted to do a very intricate design with all the flowers. They like to refer to this as a millefleur design, or "a thousand flowers." In this period, they were coming from a Victorian sensibility in terms of their design, but they were starting to be influenced by the Art Nouveau. And so there's a very flowing quality to the design that is evocative of what was happening with the Art Nouveau decoration. They were making these rugs for the Western market, and they were trying to make them so that they would appeal to that Western sensibility. You'll notice that the red is a sort of burgundy or wine color. That is actually an insect dye. We talk a lot about natural dyes, which are dyes that are made from plant materials. This is made from the cochineal insect that's found on cactus. If you'll notice at the bottom, it's missing the outer border. Here we have that red border.
GUEST: Uh-huh.
APPRAISER: And any time you're evaluating the condition of the rug, you want to make sure that that border goes around to the bottom and the top. And you'll notice that it's lost that red border on the bottom and the top. And oftentimes, what happened is, they would get a little bit of unraveling, and instead of fixing the unraveling, they would just even it off and overcast it. It's sort of frayed on the edge. The best thing would be to take it to a qualified repairer, who could rewrap it with wool so that it was secure. If I were selling this in my gallery, I would sell it for about $8,500.
GUEST: Okay.
APPRAISER: If it had been able to retain the end borders, it would have been worth more in the realm of $12,000.