GUEST: One day an antique man came around and took quite notice of this rug, and my mother just used it as a... scrape your feet on when you came in. This antique man kept noticing this rug. My mother said, "No, I don't want to sell it and I don't have anything here I want to sell," so the antique man left. My mother immediately took this rug because she thought perhaps it had some value. She immediately took the rug and put it in her dining room, where it stayed in a little corner in the dining room and it wasn't used in the entry hall anymore for wiping your feet on.
APPRAISER: Mercifully. The interest in this piece is not so much in the provenance or even rarity so much as it is, first of all, the fact of its size. It's not a bag face or a pillow cover or anything that would be... have gone over a pack animal. It's a small rug, which is kind of unusual. I'd say it's about two feet by three-and-a-half feet. It's not very easy to see where it would have come from. I think it's Northwest Persian, probably made by Kurds, looking at the weave. But the beauty of this piece, and I love it, is the color because the color they've used-- a red... the green is an overdyed color which is a combination of the indigo and the yellow. Also, the drawing is perfectly beautiful. The outlining of the little rosettes-- the little meander borders are very graceful. The rhythm of this piece going from red into two yellow and one indigo band is particularly nice. This little barbershop finish. It's just a beautiful piece. It's a beautiful little piece.
GUEST: I'm glad we held on to it, then.
APPRAISER: Oh, I'm so glad you held on to it, too, especially since, if it... it's highly collectible, and if it came up at auction it would probably sell for someplace between $2,500 and $3,500.
GUEST: Hmm...Just for a little rug to wipe your feet on.
GUEST: Just for a little rug to wipe your feet on.
