Blog Author’s Note: This is a review of the Free Kindle Edition of “Rugs: Oriental and Occidental, Antique & Modern: A Handbook for Ready Reference,” by Rosa Belle Holt. As is noted in the following review, that free Kindle edition does not contain the illustrations needed to really get the most out of the book. I intend to furnish those illustrations on other posts in the future.

Free At The Kindle Store

According to the author Mrs. Holt, this book was one of the first–if not the first–systematic approach to detailing and discussing the subject of Oriental rugs. It covered the rug world at the turn of the Twentieth Century exhaustively.

Even today, more than a century later, it is difficult to overstate the importance of “Rugs: Oriental and Occidental, Antique & Modern: A Handbook for Ready Reference.” This is said partly with ‘tongue in cheek’ because the Internet is replete with articles consisting of nothing more than pages copied from the book. Rarely does Mrs. Holt receive credit for her work.  This, of course, is nothing more than the attempt by blog owners to curry favor with Google by stuffing their pages with content. Which wouldn’t be so bad if they at least got the story right!

One well-respected site at least admits that the articles–several articles in fact–did not originate with them: but went on to date the material as “late 1900’s.”  1999 would be late 1900’s. The book was published in 1901. 1899 would be “late 1800’s.” This might seem like a small point, but it is indicative of a wider problem with our beloved standardless Internet: there’s a lot of wrong information out there!

A 1901 publishing date means Mrs or Miss Holt–never Ms in that era–wrote the book in the final years of the 19th Century, not the 20th!  William McKinley was president–or maybe Theodore Roosevelt; most certainly not Bill Clinton. Queen Victoria was not in her grave yet a year.

As you might expect, Holt’s views are not those of an “enlightened”–more tongue in cheek–20th Century individual. In other words, she is not politically correct. She speaks of nations and peoples in a way that makes a modern reader wince.

Whatever one might think of her politics, she knew something about rugs and told the story in clear, readable prose. She broke the world down into the ethnic regions existing at the time; she described in detail the color, shape and markings of each region’s rugs. But her comments on the people who wove them often seem harsh and patronizing to our modern ears.

 I believe she can be forgiven, however, for the world she lived in was vastly different from the interconnected world of today. While the well-advanced Industrial Revolution made rugs on powerlooms in most of the West, the ultimate abandonment of the ancient craft of rug making had not as yet been realized in the East and Near East; there women, and to a lesser extent men, still wove rugs as their ancestors had before them: on ground looms, hand looms, treadle looms and pit looms. They produced rugs detailed from their imprinted souls rather than templates. Who they were, where they lived and what they believed was displayed in their weaving.

While the Kindle Edition of  “Rugs: Oriental and Occidental, Antique & Modern: A Handbook for Ready Reference–” the book read by this reviewer– was cheap–free actually as it is in the public domain–it unfortunately did not contain the pictures found in earlier editions. Readers must keep the Internet handy as they read to find examples of the various rugs she mentions. This edition did have one advantage, however: the table of contents, glossary and index were linked by hypertext  to allow readers access to the sections of the book that interested them; something Rosa Belle Holt could not even have imagined.  Other editions are available for sale on line that probably contain the original plates, but they cost considerably more.

Later Note: I purchased one of those more expensive books. Many of the illustrations are now found on this blog. The chapter called ‘Designs’ on page 37 of the Kindle Free Edition, is now found at https://rugs4.com/oriental-and-occidental-rugs-designs-and-motifs/ . This is a great chapter as it displays and discusses the various motifs in Oriental Rugs–the palm leaf, for example, which is today called the ’Paisley.’

The information in this old book is outdated. Within 20 years of its publication the map the author drew upon had changed. The Ottoman Empire was gone. By now, over a century later, most of the nomadic tribes she mentioned have been converted to city dwellers and their looms to power looms, their methodology now more geared toward production than craftsmanship. Still, this book makes great reading for any historian interested in the history of the art of rug weaving.

All the books you will ever need on Oriental Rugs–some of them free–at the Kindle Store