Store will be CLOSED December 5th 2013

[drcollie]

I'm headed to Philadelphia on Thursday 12/05/13 to visit my Turkish Rug guy and see if I can bring back half a dozen or so handmade carpets.

[drcollie]

Picked up (7) new rugs today, just got home.....miserable traffic on the I-95 corridor. I thought long and hard about buying these hand-made carpets because they've become pricey. I know a lot of my customers will give he a bit of a hard time when they see the price tags on them and invariably they will ask "When will they go on sale?" Answer - they never do...but I don't get them for the person off the street. They are for someone who appreciates the art of a handmade Turkish carpet and realizes what they are (I am admittedly a rug junkie and have ten of them in my house). Turkish labor and cost of the raw materials has gone up, the end result is all the rugs I bought today will be $ 83 a square foot. That means an 8 ' x 10 ' will price out at $ 6,440. Like I said, not for everyone. But there is an interesting thing with these carpets - once people get beyond the price of them and get them home and put them in a room, they never come back and say 'Wish I had not have spent that much on one'. most the time I hear 'I'm saving up for another one'. Anyways, I'll post some photos tomorrow of them just to share. I had to leave one behind that I really liked, because I'd reached my financial limit buying the (7) but as soon as I sell off one of these new ones I'll have the one I left behind shipped to me if they haven't yet sold it.

Interesting discussion with the owner of Woven Legends as well. We were discussing prices and how the Chinese / Indians / Pakastanis have taken to copying Turkish rugs and now 60% (by her estimate) of all Turkish carpets.....are not! Once you get an eye for them, the knock offs are pretty easy to spot, but all those tourists coming off the cruise ships in Turkey are going to be fair game...lol