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My Magic Carpet Ride In India
A trip to the source makes
for great adventure, but don't expect any real steals
Several years ago, when I was looking for Oriental carpets
to furnish my three-story Brooklyn (N.Y.) brownstone, a
friend took me to a merchant he knew in upstate New York. I
bought three gorgeous rugs, all of them made in India.
More recently my husband Ken and I decided we needed four
more rugs for the house: one for our bedroom, one for the
living room, and one each for the two staircase landings.
This time, however, we were planning a family vacation to
India and thought it would be fun to buy at the source. In
December we traveled to north-central India, a major
rug-production center. Our challenge was to find rugs of
higher quality and lower price than we could get in New
York. To see how we fared, I lined up a carpet expert back
home to evaluate my finds when we returned.
We began our hunt in the city of Jaipur, where Nand Kishore
Chaudhary, owner of Jaipur Carpets (jpcarpet@gmail.com),
relies on a network of weavers in villages throughout the
state of Rajasthan to produce the rugs he sells, mostly for
export. Designs are computer-generated versions of classical
patterns, in the reds, blues, greens, and golds that appeal
to Western tastes.
We tracked Chaudhary down through a photo credit in the book
Indian Carpets, by AshaRani Mathur, which we bought in a
hotel gift shop. (After two rug authorities I had consulted
in the U.S. refused to share their sources, I decided to
scout out places once I got to India.) Chaudhary offered the
perfect solution to our quest for runners to fit two
irregularly shaped staircase landings: custom-made rugs, one
a classic Jaipur design with flowers and medallions and the
other in what looks like an American Arts and Crafts style.
COMING TO TERMS
Prices, based on the tightness of the weave, were $15 per
square foot for the first rug, which had 140 knots per inch,
and $10 per square foot for the second, which had 81 knots
per inch. The total tab, to cover approximately 64 square
feet of floor, was $937. The rugs would take about five
months to weave. (Although the knot counts were relatively
low, we were sold on the rugs' good-quality wool, which is
durable enough for high-traffic areas, and the fact they
were well-priced for nonstandard sizes.)
Although bargaining is part of the Indian culture, Chaudhary
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 store his daughter
runs, free shipping, and the right to return the rugs to
Atlanta for any reason (at our expense) for a full refund.
When we later shopped for rugs in Delhi, I compared the
prices at Jaipur Carpets with those at Obeetee, a store our
hotel recommended. The price for similar custom-made runners
was three times as much as we paid. The lesson: Don't
automatically go to places your hotel sends you.
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