Is there a middle ground for carpets and rugs?

Not easy. We have been struggling with the same problem. We looked at oriental rugs but a deal is never a deal. Good new handknotted rugs cost at least $75/square foot.

I have no idea about that.....Can anyone give some idea...

furniture

If you're not set on something new, consignment stores can have some great stuff.

+1. Auctions can also be great places to find good deals on Persians. You won't be able necessarily to get into a really prized rug, but you can get a nice Indo-Persian (e.g. a copy of a classical Persian design that has been made in India) but that is still of decent quality, hand-knotted wool for well under $1,000 in a pretty good size. Some genuine Persians can be had at $1,000.

The nice thing about these types of rugs is that they hold their value. Unlike Ikea stuff, which essentially depreciates as you "consume" it through use, and you have to throw away because it holds no resale value, even a decent Persian you find at auction is a somewhat recoverable asset if you take care of it.

Disclaimer: I'm not a big expert on rugs and carpets, but I talk daily with people who are. First of all: don't buy new ones. They do not hold value, at least they haven't for the last fifteen years or so. The exception may be the top-top-quality stuff, which mainly goes to the middle east and the big financial centres of the world. Very true - the first owners of the persian rug you buy at an auction have already taken the (huge) hit in value. If you can stomach having a used rug, just have it professionally cleaned and it becomes vintage, then semi-antique and antique all the quicker. At the semi-antique/antique mark, they can start to gain in value, if the colours and patterns are still, or back, in fashion. Example; a big, good-but-not-top-quality Afghan bokhara or a semi-nomadic Persian rug from the sixties or seventies, with the now unfashionable "gold wash", is often almost impossible to sell. If you don't mind an overwash like something between a golden retriever and a badly faked blonde, you can probably get one of those for around $500 in Europe. Four years ago, I bought a small, ca. 1970, medium-quality semi-nomadic, gold washed but not too badly, nice even wear, but with too-short fringes (generally a sign of wear) at auction. Admittedly, this was in Scandinavia, where non-antique rugs with any wear are difficult to sell. I paid the equivalent of $100. The original price tag from around 1970 was still attached under it; $1200. A couple of months ago, I gave it to someone who helped me move, as they wanted to pay for cleaning it, and I wasn't interested. Having it properly cleaned would have been another $150. Also, don't be afraid to buy a rug that has some wear, as long as the edges are not too worn, and the wear is even all over it. In Southern Europe, a well-worn rug is seen as "classy", in Northern Europe, less so (except maybe in the UK). Ikea's stuff can actually be very good for the low price, and holds up well, I'm told.

Interesting post, Lucky Strike.

Do tackily expensive Oriental rugs exist from the '70s? I'd imagine given the oil fortunes that were created around that time--and the Middle Eastern appetite for gold--that there really extravagant rugs made at that time.

I suspect such things are out of fashion now.

Oh yes, they exist, and in the Middle East, plus Pakistan, India, etc., and they are in no way out of fashion. Most rugs of the tackily expensive class aren't gold wash these days - that was more of a fad I used as an example above - but you can get hold of unbelievably garish silk rugs with synthetic dyes (of fantastic artisanal quality, but that doesn't help much). These are made for the middle eastern market. They're seemingly made for lavish Bollywood or Lollywood mansions. Picture Saddam's palaces, and you've got it. These rugs occasionally find their way to the western markets, sometimes through military personnel in Afghanistan and Iraq, sometimes western expats in the same places, who think they'll make a killing on taking a few of them with them. The trouble is that the Western taste demands "authentic" rugs with natural dyes, and often rustic kelims or other nomadic or semi-nomadic rugs. If westerners want the "urban" Bollywood style, they generally want antiques. Here's an old pic of the rug I mentioned above; it's a small Beluch prayer rug, wool on wool, of medium-to-low quality. The gold wash (really an overdye) isn't too pronounced. As you can see, it has a "prayer niche", that is, the stylised tree shape in the middle and the rectangles to the sides are for placing your head and hands on during prayer. These patterns have been explained to me like this, taken from loose memory: The tree- or plant-like pattern in the middle is "the tree of life", really an ancient Hebrew symbol, with leaves, flowers and birds sitting in the top branches. There are walls and hedges surrounding and protecting it. The black figures close to the edge are stylised scorpions, - you can see the curled tails. The zig-zagging pattern inside the scorpion border are stylised snakes, also kept from the tree of life by the walls and hedges. I couldn't say if this is a completely correct traditional interpretation, but it's as I remember it.

Some of the new hand knotted Tibetan rugs are very nice and quite well made. They use Swiss chrome dyes, leagues above analine dyes used in the mid-20th century. Tufenkian does extremely nice ones:

www.tufenkiancarpets.com

One of my favorites:

Very nice!

Another:

This second one is basically a "close up" of a traditional design. I love this.

Me too, I've alway liked things scaled extremely up or down; miniatures, giants etc. Like this Royal Danish pattern:

Cool.