Transcript
Speaker: Hello, and welcome to Curious Objects, brought to you by the magazine Antiques.
Speaker: I'm Ben Miller.
Speaker: This is the podcast about art, decorative arts, and antiques, the stories behind them, and what they can reveal to us about ourselves and the people who came before us.
Speaker: Here's a fun fact.
Speaker: One of the metrics for the quality of a handwoven rug is called KPSI, which sounds maybe very scientific, but it's actually a simple concept.
Speaker: Knots per square inch.
Speaker: Each rug is made up of hand-tied knots.
Speaker: The more knots, the more meticulous and detailed the design or pattern can be, and of course, the more labor it took to make.
Speaker: A reasonably skilled weaver can tie a knot, oh, say every 10 seconds or so, which comes to 360 knots per hour.
Speaker: And in a fine rug, 360 knots might be as little as one square inch, which means for a room-sized rug, you could be talking about thousands and thousands of hours of highly skilled artisan labor.
Speaker: Which goes a long way toward explaining why real handmade rugs cost so much more than machine-made disposable ones.
Speaker: Is the quality difference worth it?
Speaker: Well, we're going to find out.
Speaker: This is the first of two episodes I'm doing in partnership with the firm Claremont Rug Company.
Speaker: I'm here in their offices in Oakland, California, with their president and founder, Jan David Winnitz.
Speaker: Thanks for having me, Jan.
Speaker: Jan David Winnitz, Okay.
Speaker: Well, you're welcome.
Speaker: You're very welcome.
Speaker: Today's Curious Object is a piece that I think many listeners will relate to, and it's not because you're necessarily a rug collector enthusiast, maybe you are, but it's because this is an object that has traveled with Jan through time and space.
Speaker: And it's been an important presence in his life.
Speaker: And maybe there's something like this in your life, an object that has accompanied you through years or decades.
Speaker: It's the thing you'd rescue from a fire.
Speaker: And for Jan, that special object is this rug.
Speaker: and it's hanging in his office, not for sale of course.
Speaker: But in today's episode, we're going to hear from Jan about the power and meaning of this rug and how it intertwines with his own remarkable story of discovering and navigating the world of antique rugs.
Speaker: But first, Jan, are you ready for some rapid fire questions?
Speaker: Jan Bogaert, I am.
Speaker: And just a comment about something you said earlier about how precious rugs are to people.
Speaker: About 15 years ago, we had a big fire in the Brooklyn Hills just right above us.
Speaker: And when people were escaping the fire, there was numerous videos made of the people running down the hills.
Speaker: And there was a number of them were carrying rugs over their shoulders.
Speaker: And that indicates how precious the rugs were to them.
Speaker: Yeah, that really tells you a lot, doesn't it?
Speaker: All right, well, let's dive in.
Speaker: So, Jan, what's the most valuable rug that you've ever touched?
Speaker: A few million dollars.
Speaker: Oh, is that all?
Speaker: Historical places, yeah.
Speaker: Well, that's one of the things we're going to talk about is that rare antique rugs are very underappreciated as artworks in monetary value.
Speaker: Although we have many major collectors who have invested very heavily in creating their collections.
Speaker: So if you had to choose something other than rugs to deal in, what would it be?
Speaker: types of original tribal art that have a very, very long history.
Speaker: Like I do have one client who was also a major class
Speaker: collection of Indoorwood art, which is also fascinating because it has a lot of the organic creativity that our rugs have.
Speaker: Love that.
Speaker: The people that created the rugs were of the earth.
Speaker: They were pre-industrial people because we deal in almost exclusively 19th and then some 18th century rugs.
Speaker: They lived in small villages without electricity.
Speaker: Their method of mobility was horseback.
Speaker: And they were very close to the earth.
Speaker: And the rugs are an expression of their relationship with the earth, which is so precious and so needed in today's world.
Speaker: What's your favorite museum to visit?
Speaker: Well, the de Young in San Francisco and then the Metropolitan in New York.
Speaker: Hard to argue with that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: What's one book that an amateur should read to start to think about and understand antique rugs?
Speaker: Well, I think when I finally finished my book, which I've been working on for, I've embarrassed to say 30 years, would really show many different aspects of antique rugs that have never been presented in the Western world.
Speaker: What is a mistake you've made in the business that you regret and maybe learn something from?
Speaker: Well, I think it's been more of an evolution of starting to wanting to sell when we started our company because our company started very small.
Speaker: Our original inventory was only about 40 rugs and we had a tiny little storefront around the corner.
Speaker: And so there was an urge to sell.
Speaker: And then we found it was much more to my...
Speaker: much more palatable to me and much more effective to become an educational center, to educate people about the rugs and then let the rugs find their own homes.
Speaker: And that became incredibly more effective because people would fall in love with them.
Speaker: And we'll talk during this episode why that is so, that it's such a personal thing.
Speaker: proclivity, a personal relationship with the rugs.
Speaker: If I did make one mistake, was very early on, very pale tone rugs were fashionable for home decor.
Speaker: And we did buy some of those because they were selling elsewhere.
Speaker: They were selling in New York, they were selling in London.
Speaker: So we bought some, but they just didn't have the heart and soul because they weren't made
Speaker: from the people as their own personal expression.
Speaker: They were made for a market and they didn't have the life quality.
Speaker: And I'll be talking about when I say life quality or the emotional aspect, the rugs were made by women and they are, I think, probably the premier's women in art form in the world.
Speaker: And they are an expression of the women's or the tribal people's relationship to nature.
Speaker: So if you imagined going on a permanent camping trip and you had to learn how to not only survive in nature, but to benefit from nature and to live a full hearty life, you would need to learn about the rhythms of nature.
Speaker: And that's what the rugs are expressing, all the harmony and the diversity that is in all natural items.
Speaker: And I think this is one of the greatest values in that they touch the emotions, not only the mind.
Speaker: They touch emotions very strongly.
Speaker: Along those lines, what was the last rug you saw that gave you goosebumps?
Speaker: Well, you know, it's interesting.
Speaker: It's sitting right over there.
Speaker: It's the last rug against the wall with the red field.
Speaker: That's a Persian Bakshayesh.
Speaker: The one that's rolled there.
Speaker: And that was made around 1850 in a mountain village at an elevation of around 6,000 feet.
Speaker: The people who lived there, they may have lived in their village their whole lifetime and never left.
Speaker: But at the same time, their ability to express all the different aspects, all the different nuances of nature in such a way, and each bhakshayage is different.
Speaker: And one of the things about like an antique rug, like the rug I'm discussing right now is a nine by 12.
Speaker: They were made on a vertical loom.
Speaker: They're not the product of one person.
Speaker: Small ones are, but the larger ones are the product like a nine by 12, like the one we're discussing right now, was woven by six women on a vertical loom.
Speaker: And they sat side by side on this 12 foot high loom for almost a year weaving.
Speaker: And each person, they had a theme or a pattern that they were weaving, but each person was expressing it a little differently.
Speaker: And then it grew out of their life story.
Speaker: So sometimes one weaver would put a child in there.
Speaker: That could have been a child, their own child.
Speaker: Or they'll put a few animals running across it, and maybe there was a herd of bison.
Speaker: or elk running through the village at that time.
Speaker: So they were putting their own personal expression there.
Speaker: And then when they were weaving, this very slow process, they were chanting.
Speaker: And the reason for the chanting was it created a consistent rhythm.
Speaker: So it was a group, in the case of a 9x12, of six people working together as one.
Speaker: And which is another lesson that we really need in our modern world is to learn how to work together as if we were one.
Speaker: So and that's another I think for me is one of the great values of the anti drugs.
Speaker: Fantastic.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And then one last thing about that is just imagine sitting on this 12 foot high loom.
Speaker: on rickety scaffolding side by side, a hip to hip with five other people for a year.
Speaker: And that they were collaborating.
Speaker: I would think I would go to either love them or hate them.
Speaker: I think the love is more of a, you know, is what happened more often.
Speaker: Yeah, I suppose if it was hate, you might not finish the rug.
Speaker: You might think you're right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: We'll be right back with Jan David Winnitz of Claremont Rugs.
Speaker: He has a deeply revealing story for us about his personal prized rug and how he has grown alongside it.
Speaker: But first, I just want to say thanks for listening.
Speaker: And thanks to all of you who have gotten in touch.
Speaker: I love hearing what you think, learning about your curious objects and hearing your suggestions for future episodes.
Speaker: We actually have a couple in the works right now that have come from your ideas, so please keep those coming and send them to me on Instagram at Objective Interest or over email at CuriousObjectsPodcast at gmail.com.
Speaker: Another way you can really help me out is by leaving a five-star rating for Curious Objects in Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever you're listening.
Speaker: and just writing a quick sentence or two about why you like the show.
Speaker: I'm told that's a really important way to bring new listeners to the podcast.
Speaker: So thank you so much for taking the time to do that.
Speaker: It means a lot to me, and frankly, it's just so much fun to read the reviews you write.
Speaker: Okay, with that said, let's get back to Antique Rugs.
Speaker: Antique Rugs
Speaker: So Jan, let's talk about this particular rug of yours that's hanging in your office.
Speaker: And first of all, could you just give listeners a mental image of what it looks like?
Speaker: It is bokshayish, which is one of my favorite styles.
Speaker: And it's a dragon phoenix design, which is a very old design in the Eastern world, where the dragon, which shows four large dragons around the medallion, the dragon was the symbol of the masculine principle.
Speaker: Not man, but the masculine force, which was, they believe, was the force of the cosmos.
Speaker: And the phoenix, the bird, which was shown like almost embracing the dragon in this rug, was the feminine principle, which was the receptive quality of the earth.
Speaker: And the whole rug is about that relationship between the dragon and phoenix, between yin and yang.
Speaker: Yang being the masculine, yin being the feminine.
Speaker: And again, this is not man and woman.
Speaker: These are cosmic principles of the Eastern world.
Speaker: And it is powerful.
Speaker: And at the same time, it's incredibly embracing.
Speaker: And so the dragon and phoenix is shown in the medallion, but around the edges in the corner pieces, it is a depiction of a metal floor.
Speaker: repeat with spiders.
Speaker: So it was showing macrocosm and microcosm that what is created perhaps and appears in the macrocosm in the heavenly world also manifests in the microcosm on the forest floor.
Speaker: How did you first encounter it?
Speaker: This rock?
Speaker: Very interesting.
Speaker: Very, very interesting.
Speaker: I saw it first when I was 19 years old, where I just started studying in UC Berkeley.
Speaker: And there was a collector who knew some of my family members who had this rug.
Speaker: And I saw it, I fell in love with it, and I said, oh my God, is this for sale?
Speaker: I didn't have the money to buy it, but that's the question you ask.
Speaker: And he said, no.
Speaker: And then, but this rug stayed in my head, and I guess I stayed in the gentleman's head, because about a year and a half later, he offered it to me.
Speaker: And originally, when I saw it first, I said, well, if he were to sell it, what would the cost be?
Speaker: And he said $2,500, which at that time sounded like all the money in the world, because a VW Beetle at that time was $1,900.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: When I came to a year later, he approached me and said, OK, well, I think I'm ready to sell that rug.
Speaker: And I said, great.
Speaker: And he charged me thirty five hundred dollars.
Speaker: Oh, wow.
Speaker: And actually, I learned a very valuable lesson, which was.
Speaker: I became very educated about value.
Speaker: I knew a lot about rugs from family members, but I didn't know much about value.
Speaker: But when I learned about value, the $3,500 seemed like a lot less money than the $2,500 originally did.
Speaker: Interesting.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So that was the first great rug I actually bought.
Speaker: And I was at that time, I was in my freshman year at UC Berkeley.
Speaker: Did you put it in your dorm room or what did you do with it?
Speaker: I did not.
Speaker: No, I was living in a student co-op and it did not belong there.
Speaker: I went into safekeeping.
Speaker: Yeah, okay, that was probably for the best.
Speaker: So when you did purchase this $3,500 rug, did you have any inkling at that point that you might want to go into the business, that this might be a professional calling for you?
Speaker: Well, you know, I was studying education and my passion was I saw a lot of
Speaker: I thought, you know, when you're 19 years old, you think that everyone before you does everything wrong or you have better ideas.
Speaker: But I wanted to reinvent the education system.
Speaker: Now, I feel like I'm still in education, no doubt about it, because we basically, as I said earlier, we educate people about rugs.
Speaker: And then many of those people fall in love with the rugs as an art form on their own.
Speaker: And also there's life lessons about balance and harmony and about how to get along in the world that's inherent in the rugs.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So how did that for you evolve out of a sort of interest or a curiosity and into a career?
Speaker: Well, it's very interesting.
Speaker: I was a school teacher.
Speaker: I was teaching high school and coaching the track team.
Speaker: for three years.
Speaker: And I read everything, all the books that I could find about rugs because I really, really wanted to learn.
Speaker: But there was a disconnect.
Speaker: What I saw when I looked at the rugs and what I read in the books were not the same thing.
Speaker: The books were scholarly analysis, where the rugs were this deeply impassioned item, and that was missing in every book that I read, just to a greater or lesser extent.
Speaker: And the way I actually entered with the career was at this point when there was this disconnect.
Speaker: I didn't know really what to do.
Speaker: I was thinking about going and seeing if I could find a way to visit these old weaving villages.
Speaker: Many of which, like I mentioned, Bakshash is only one road into that town in that village, even today, way up into the mountains.
Speaker: But I was in a standing in line at a coffee house to get a cappuccino in Berkeley.
Speaker: And there was a very, very tall gentleman in front of me wearing an unusual wool hat.
Speaker: And we turned around and we started to talk and he became, I found out that he was a Courageous tribesman who is now living in this area, who had recently moved here.
Speaker: And we became business partners when we learned about our mutual passion in rugs.
Speaker: That's quite a story.
Speaker: It was an amazing story of synchronicity, to be frank with you.
Speaker: It feels like somebody was looking out for you.
Speaker: Perhaps.
Speaker: Because he confirmed a lot of what I was seeing because of his background was until he was almost 20 years old, he was just in this isolated village.
Speaker: that was an ancestral village for centuries.
Speaker: They didn't even know how long because there's no written history.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So going back to the, to our curious object, to this, this rug, I know it's not for sale and I'm not going to try to change your mind about that, but if you imagine for a second that I'm a prospective buyer and that you are trying to sell it to me, or at least sell me on it as a, as an object, what would you tell me about it?
Speaker: What's your, what's your sales pitch for that piece?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Number one, I don't believe in sales pitch.
Speaker: But at the same time, what I would say about that or any rug is that it's the relationship between the macrocosm, which is the rug as a whole, and the microcosm.
Speaker: And that every element in the rug needs to be in harmony with every other element.
Speaker: It's like if you look, if you just take a walk through the forest and
Speaker: and you're a bit sensitive to the forest, there is a sense that one gets, and that is also scientific, that everything in that forest is in relationship to everything else.
Speaker: Like that tree, when it dies, it disintegrates and becomes soil, and it nurtures another tree to grow.
Speaker: Very simple example of everything that happens in nature.
Speaker: And that is what one of the things that they were portraying in the rugs.
Speaker: And that man had a place in nature to nurture it and vitalize it.
Speaker: Now, which is, again, another lesson that we badly need today.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And to get a little into the weeds about it, what would you say about quality and condition and all of those details?
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: One of the great misnomers about antique rugs is that not count is paramount.
Speaker: It is not by any means.
Speaker: Some of the most valuable and most beautiful rugs are Caucasian rugs that were made high in the mountains of...
Speaker: of Central Asia and the Caucasian range.
Speaker: And they are rather loosely woven like certain Caucasian Kazakhs, which can be incredibly moving, have 50 or 60 knots per square range.
Speaker: And then there are 20th century Persian rugs where the knot count is 500 knots a square inch.
Speaker: But at the same time, they're just so repetitive because the weaver became a machine, a knot making machine.
Speaker: Now I have very strong opinions.
Speaker: The artistic aspect was removed and the weaver was just following a pattern.
Speaker: I feel like if the weaver is acting as a machine, why don't you just have a machine maker?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But it's the heart and soul, what it expresses and what it evokes is the beauty of the rug.
Speaker: And that's what my clients fall in love with.
Speaker: What's the knot count on this rug?
Speaker: The one we've been discussing?
Speaker: It's about 125 knots per square inch.
Speaker: So not especially high, but you're saying that doesn't matter.
Speaker: It does not matter.
Speaker: In certain types of rugs, it does matter.
Speaker: Persian city rugs, where they're all about the intricacy.
Speaker: But at the same time, it's what the knot expresses, what the knot count expresses, not the knot count itself.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So has your mentality around this rug or the way you sort of see it and understand it and appreciate it, has that evolved over the course of your career?
Speaker: I fall in love with it more.
Speaker: You know, almost everything in our life, there's a point where it gives us great satisfaction, we're elated by it, but then that diminishes over time.
Speaker: And almost everything as we get to know it fully.
Speaker: A great rug like I have rugs that I've seen for almost 70 years now because of them.
Speaker: They came from my family members.
Speaker: They're still growing on me.
Speaker: I'm still seeing things in them that I did not recognize whatsoever at the beginning because there is so much invested in them by those people.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So you've fallen in love with this rug more than once.
Speaker: I've fallen in love with this rug.
Speaker: Every time I see it, I fall in love with it more.
Speaker: It's behind my desk.
Speaker: And I see it every day.
Speaker: And I would not give it up for the world.
Speaker: So, I mean, you've had it throughout your whole career.
Speaker: Was there ever a time when maybe things were tough when, you know, the end of the month was coming around, you weren't sure what you were going to do and you thought maybe you should consider selling it?
Speaker: Well, you know, we have been very fortunate in a few things.
Speaker: One, I was always told by family members to follow your passion and to follow it with intensity and that everything will go well.
Speaker: which I have always done.
Speaker: And we were very fortunate that we started our little tiny company right at the beginning when the computer industry was taking off in Silicon Valley.
Speaker: So our original clientele, the type of people that would walk in the door, I do not name names.
Speaker: I have a policy against that.
Speaker: But many people who are also in their 20s, I started the company when I was 25, walked in the door.
Speaker: They became the computer titans in the computer industry.
Speaker: You never had to consider putting that rug out for sale.
Speaker: No, sir.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: we've worked very very hard and it's the interesting thing is when you're passionate about something when you're deeply passionate um it doesn't feel like work like like it's been fun the fun of the same people say you know you're kind of gray now and you know aren't you don't you think about retiring i say what else would i do that's right so much of all the antique dealers i know across all the different disciplines
Speaker: they never retire.
Speaker: It's an amazing thing.
Speaker: Something to look forward to in my future, I hope.
Speaker: Yeah, I feel very, very, very fortunate.
Speaker: And there's been some very fortuitous occurrences that have happened as well.
Speaker: Well, and so now you have a huge inventory.
Speaker: We're sitting in your shop now and you have gallery after gallery full of rugs.
Speaker: And we'll explore that in more detail next episode.
Speaker: But I assume, you know, at this point you've handled so many rugs and many of them have been, I imagine, more important and more rare and more...
Speaker: more valuable than this first one that you acquired.
Speaker: But has there ever been another rug that felt special to you in the way that this one does?
Speaker: Well, there are many.
Speaker: And we do, my wife and I do have our own private collection.
Speaker: And at this point, and at the same time, we have clients who over time have the same level of passion and almost the same level of what we call the eye, the ability to see into the rug that we do.
Speaker: Really, our mission is to find rear rugs through private collectors and then sell them to people who are either collectors now or perhaps will become collectors.
Speaker: So, we're in a very fortuitous situation.
Speaker: Yes, we're surrounded by many, many rugs.
Speaker: You know, our inventory is over 2,500 pieces.
Speaker: But that's not the point.
Speaker: The point is we only deal in really special pieces.
Speaker: which are not just furnishing items.
Speaker: They are an art form.
Speaker: And to a greater or less extent, they express the artistic principles of balance and harmony that I've been talking about.
Speaker: If they don't have that, if a rug is flat, if it's cold, it has no business to be in my image.
Speaker: Now, these rugs, they last generations, lifetimes and lifetimes.
Speaker: And so your rug, our curious object, will presumably outlive you and will eventually be in someone else's hands.
Speaker: And I wonder how you think about that.
Speaker: And if you can imagine somebody else developing a relationship with it as you have.
Speaker: That's an interesting question.
Speaker: Well, let's put it that way, this way.
Speaker: Let's say this Baksha Isra, or this Dragon and Phoenix rug we've been talking about, let's say maybe in its lifetime, because it's early 19th century, maybe it's had six or seven owners.
Speaker: It has given great joy and fulfillment to not only its owners, and it's not just
Speaker: The pride of I own something fantastic.
Speaker: That's very cheap for me.
Speaker: But I own something that is giving back to me every day.
Speaker: I think that's what's precious about a great work of art or particularly great rugs.
Speaker: So I think whoever the next owner might be, that if that rug gives them the same level of passion and fulfillment that it's given me, and if it gives their circle of family and friends that, I think that the rug has fulfilled its mission.
Speaker: Well, Jan and David Winnitz, thanks so much for joining me.
Speaker: And we'll be back with you again for next episode, looking at some rugs from your retail collection.
Speaker: Until then, today's episode was edited and produced by Sammy Delati with social media and web support from Sarah Bellata.
Speaker: Sarah Holt is our digital media and editorial associate.
Speaker: Our music is by Trap Rabbit, and I'm Ben Miller.
