The Handmade Carpet: A Comprehensive Guide to Contemporary Rugs

The handmade rug industry has gone through a revolution in the last twenty-five years, and no one is better placed to explain how and why than Fritz Langauer and Ernst Swietly, who have been buying, making, collecting and writing about rugs for over fifty years. Rugs are now being made in colours and designs unimagined just a few decades ago. This new book is the only title available that shows how carpet making has changed in all traditional rug making nations as well as demonstrating through images of rugs in interior settings how the style and use of rugs has changed. Carpets carry many unspoken narratives about peoples and places - this new book reveals some of these for the first time thanks to the first-hand experience of the authors in the souks and bazars of the Middle East.

Ernst Anton Swietly grew up in a family that had just one single carpet. It was rolled out only once a year, during the Christmas holidays, and on each 7 January, the carpet was rolled up and hidden behind a box until next Christmas. Since then, for Ernst, carpets have been a symbol of peaceful, warm, cosy family get-togethers. Later on, Ernst A. Swietly - a journalist for fifty years - traveled the carpet-producing countries of the world discovering the secrets of handmade weaving and their design principles. This is how he met Fritz Langauer, and they realized it was time to write a book on the carpet world of the 21st century. Only thus could they bring the incredibly diverse artistic, political and economic environment of knotted and woven works of art to a wider audience, with the aim of correcting numerous misunderstandings and reconciling many points of conflict between East and West, North and South, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and Judaism, in a peaceful and understanding way. Fritz Langauer is the son of the businessman Friedrich Langauer who, with his cousin, Adolf Böhm, founded Adil Besim OHG immediately after the Second World. As one of the sons of the two founders, Fritz Langauer joined the company in 1957. With its five branches, a carpet laundry and repair workshop, it developed over the years to become one of the largest department stores in Europe. Through many procurement trips to the countries of origin, and while searching for old and antique carpets and flatweaves in many other countries, he has been able to acquire a comprehensive knowledge of the entire spectrum of the industry, of new and antique carpets, wholesale and retail. In addition to English, he also knows Farsi (Persian) and some Turkish. He is also a court-certified expert on hand-knotted rugs and tapestries.