Althea bought this rug at an auction in Warren, New Hampshire in 1968 -- and it is the first rug we ever owned -- the first of many. I was startled when she bid on it because we were in the market for crockery and glasses and chairs, not for decorative objects, but she saw and appreciated its beauty. It's a rug for a wall because it's too old and fragile to be tread upon by the shod. Rug expert MP says that it's from the Caucasus -- specifically it's a Konaghend Kuba -- from the late nineteenth century. Of course we didn't have the faintest idea of its provenance but we knew that it was very appealing. In fact, I was so inattentive that I owned and admired the rug for forty years before I noticed that it was a prayer rug -- the mihrab is not much pronounced. Nor did I appreciate the abrash; the indigo blue ground disappears two thirds of the way down. It's probable that the woman who wove it ran out of wool from a particular dye lot, but it's also possible that the weaver was nomadic.
When Althea lived in Washington for a year in the 1990s, she took this rug with her -- the only personal possession (aside from clothes, of course) that she brought. And then many years later when she entered the Alzheimer's institution, I hung it on the wall facing her bed. I thought it would be a comfort to her -- but alas she did not remember or recognize it. When she died I brought it back home where it belongs.
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