
Oriental Carpets in Renaissance Painting - prismatic
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oriental_carpets_in_Renaissance_painting
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082349872349872
Rugs used to be a way householders (especially those minding smaller children)
could turn time into high-value low-mass export goods.

These days (and pretty much ever since the Industrial Revolution?), there's
not so much (wo)manpower[1] involved, but the required space and capital
investment are much higher.

e.g. [https://www.staubli.com/en/textile/textile-machinery-
solutio...](https://www.staubli.com/en/textile/textile-machinery-
solutions/carpet-weaving/)

[1] Last century, a friend's father had a textile operation in HK. She told me
he worried about his electricity bill, but wages were in the noise.

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nemo44x
High quality rugs like these are still hand knotted and dyed in the same
towns/cities that have historically made them. Using the same patterns and
colors each area is sort of famous for.

But yes of course many, many more are made by machines and are much more
affordable.

Real ones are great though. You can find all sorts of tiny “imperfections” and
they have a certain mass that allows them to lay down nicely.

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anonAndOn
While traveling in a distant land, I once met a woman who was an avid rug
collector. Her most prized rugs were those made by children because the weaves
were only achievable by those with little fingers and good eyesight. She
remarked that ages 4-10 were ideal. She was unconcerned about any possible
child exploitation because the rugs were very beautiful after all.

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nemo44x
A lot of the really nice, collectable ones are made by families. Some of them
can take a number of years to make. They can run in the many thousands of
dollars, which makes sense as they are 1 of a kind pieces of art. I wouldn’t
doubt that the kids are making them too in certain cases and yeah, certainly
room for abuse there.

The most sought after ones are of course antique or vintage ones. Some of the
larger ones from the 1800’s can go for 6 figures or more.

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supernova87a
Even today, for example, when you see the Pope giving mass, or some other
formal event, he sits in the middle of an oriental carpet. And when you have
some honored guest speaker on a wooden stage, a classier place will put down
an oriental carpet as decoration along with leather chairs, etc.

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nicephore
Christopher Alexander has written a beautiful book about oriental carpets[1].
It really opened my eyes about the beauty and the depth of this art.

[1]
[https://archive.org/details/AForeshadowingOf21stCenturyArt](https://archive.org/details/AForeshadowingOf21stCenturyArt)

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yostrovs
Is this cultural appropriation or would the Europeans have had to make copies
of the carpets themselves to count?

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c3534l
I don't know why people think this question is so absurd. Orientalism is a
classic case of cultural appropriation. Religious iconography was taken and
used without understanding it, to the point of hanging prayer rugs upside down
and writing faux Arabic script. Whether you think this was a pressing issue
for the medieval period is another thing entirely. My guess is the Islamic
world would have happily continued selling us rugs if we weren't busy calling
crusades against.

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Veen
> My guess is the Islamic world would have happily continued selling us rugs
> if we weren't busy calling crusades against.

How do you think there came to be an "Islamic world" in the first place?
Anatolia was Christian centuries before Muhammed was born. Persia was
Zoroastrian centuries before that. The early Muslims were colonizing and
building empires long before Europeans started crusading.

You could just as plausibly castigate Islamic architects for "culturally
appropriating" the Byzantine Christian design of the Hagia Sophia Church in
Constantinople for mosques. But it's a limited, misleading, and uninteresting
way to think about history.

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c3534l
How did you twist my aside that it wasn't important all things considered into
me castigating Europeans? I was pointing out how trivial cultural
appropriation is as a problem while acknowledging its existence.

