Robert's Rant is fabulous. It is dense with data. It also brings me pain, given my TEENY rug thimble comprised the rugs I grew up with....spoiled me terribly. It may be terminal, this. It has compounded the daunting challenge of getting a new persian rug I might love.

Here is just one example: "For poor wool quality test the pile: Take your hand and rub vigorously on the pile back and forth a dozen times in one isolated area. If you roll all the fibers which are released into a circular ball and it is equal to or greater than the pile of the rug, you probably have an inferior quality wool.'

Let me tell U.....the two antique Sarouks which comprise my thimble, BOTH, I only now know cause I am on this site.... EXCEPTIONAL You could do this test thru the demise of the planet via Global Warming....and NOT ONE FIBER....would come off those rugs!!!! I know first hand, no pun intended.

Also now get.....when all the dealers sent by Ms. Blau streamed in to get my rug....not one of them did anything cept look under one corner. Not one of them TOUCHED the pile or even bent down to look closer! They took one look (dealers with digital eyes and internal card readers) and they knew wut it was; they knew ALL ABOUT IT. Nobody Googled, nobody discussed, they just knew first second. I did NOT. And, from BIRTH. I knew....UGATZ.

I thought carpeting....toxic, EVIL stuff, carpeting, my mom tOLD me that, tho my friends' parents had it a lot, so I thought my mom was living in another century.....shed. I thought garbage area rugs shed. Persian rugs? NEVAH. I am speaking truth. Each day, I mourn more and more that I sold that rug. And way before, the other one at auction. I thought all persian rugs were like those; and even now, those, however beautiful and indomitable could not be considered museum quality, I am sure!

I had NO IDEA. Shocking.
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Ok prepare yourselves! I just did the wool test on this hideous rug I found in the garbage 10 days after my rug got gone. This big, wicked ugly rug someone in my building thew out; this rug I felt certain was total, MACHINEMADE merda and was going to throw back out when I got My New Rug???? I did the test and not one fiber came off!! My fingertips got shiny, but not one fiber came off! and I did it twice. The wool test.

This pathetic looking rug Pro said is hand knotted and most probably a Sarouk? And, I now see....with high KPSI!!! And no color run!!!!! If only it weren't so wicked ugly!!!!! Maybe I could PAINT THE FIELD & the guardbands! Would then still be ugly, but not Wicked Ugly.

The wool, I just saw, is there to STAY...very dense, but not soft and luminous dense like my rug's.

What happened to rugs and when? Have they no SHAME in Iran now? When did they loose their PRIDE? The Rug People? It ain't just the dealers.....it's the WHOLE INDUSTRY from the sheep up! I was born waaaaay too late in the 20th century. If I could have broadband....I would like a DO OVER.

How anyone can survive being besotted by hand knotted rugs now.....I do not get. But they should all get purple hearts. With fringe.

Pro.....I mean the rug which generated my first and interinable post, The war and Peach post!!!!! I uploaded pics; you said it is hand knotted, I can ow see it is, probably a Sarouk.....and instead of throwing it out I should try to seel it for even $500. tho I noticed it has some fring isue in one area.

If you like and WHY WOULD you?...I can upload the pics again. BIG rug, dk navy field. wheat thingies and sprays, center medallion, the border isn't dusguating. I think I came upon it on 11 or 12 (when U hunt, you must be barefoot and in stealth mode and run up and down the service stairwell where the service elevator is; we have another, stairwell B). It was folded and rolled nicely......my LR floor was newly and tragiclally bare... it took me a while to drag it down to 6. Heavy....like mine was.

Is it coming back yet? If Not, LUCKY YOU!!!!

i put up some jpegs again....Mr. Glutton for Punishment, lol. Tho just my understanding of this deeply unattractive thing....burgeons every day!!!!! I MEAN IT!!! The more I learn, the more rug stuff I do, the more I experience.....the more I SEE! Including, retroactively. It's kinda fabulous......I think it is how we are engineered.

And the wool test is not primitive. Scientific and high tech, sophisitcaed ....like Western diagnostic tools in medicine.....are very often trumped by this kinda "primitive." If you live on tis level of "primitive' you do ot need to waste time on that which the more unplugged are relegated to!!!!