Author Archives: Lawrence Kearney

The endless fecundity — and beauty — of the natural world is a constant theme in antique rugs, and that is especially true of the selection for our Fall 2020 Sale. The importance of the idea of “the Garden” is an often-noted feature of Islamic Art in general, and Persian Art in particular. A garden, of course, has echoes of the original Paradise, Eden, as well as the Paradise to come. But beyond all notions of the life-to-come, a garden, no matter how small, represents respite and shelter in a region where much of the landscape is arid and unforgiving.… Read More

Hello everyone, and welcome to our Virtual Gallery Walk for the current Skinner Fine Oriental Rugs & Carpets auction. I wanted to share with you some of my thoughts on the auction as a whole, and some highlights in particular.

As you browse the sale, you’ll see a number of wonderful Caucasian rugs, Turkish pillow covers, Shahsavan flatwoven covers and kilims, some remarkable early Chinese rugs, and a selection of beautiful, good condition antique carpets, many of which come from private collections and are offered here without reserve.… Read More

After a childhood in Denver, Colorado, Don Cadle attended Yale University in 1946, and after graduation, went on to Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar, earning a doctorate in History in 1953. Then followed three years in the Army in West Germany, where he worked in military intelligence, and where he met and married Ingebord, his life partner and co-collector of rugs.

Following his Army service, Don and Inge moved back to the U.S., where Don worked for a number of Federal Agencies, including the Bureau of the Budget and the Department of Commerce, ending up as the CFO for NASA.… Read More

One of the most compelling aspects of antique Oriental Rugs is the sheer range of artistic expression they are capable of:  from the crudest Turkish Tulus — little more than a patterned sheepskin made of knotted wool — to the most refined Persian workshop weaving.  The full range of rug art is represented in the our Fine Oriental Rug & Carpets Auction on Saturday, September 26th in Boston.

At one end of the aesthetic continuum are tribal weavings, of which this Turkoman tent-band (Lot 85) is a rare and beautiful example.… Read More

“The soul of the apartment is the carpet”, Edgar Allen Poe famously declared in his 1840 essay on interior design, The Philosophy of Furniture. He goes on to say that not only do the colors in the room take their cues from the carpet, but “the forms and scale” as well. He extols the virtues of patterns “with no meaning” (especially, “the Arabesque”), and writes many an unkind word about overcrowded designs and gaudiness of color. (One can’t help wondering what Poe would make of the current Age of Beige we have been in since the 1990s.)

So here we are, 175 years later, still asking that fundamental question: how should we furnish our interiors?… Read More

“In order for some one to know a carpet, he has to have stood in the middle of it,” the brilliant English art critic–and rug collector–David Sylvester noted (HALI, issue 42, page 82).

This antique Sarouk carpet, for instance, like most really good late 19th century Persian workshop carpets, commands one’s attention. But great Persian carpets do more than merely capture your attention, they repay and magnify that attention: the more you look, the more you see.… Read More