Part 1
In part one of a two-part Curious Objects episode with Claremont Rug Company, president and founder Jan Winitz gives Benjamin Miller the goods on the first Oriental rug he ever acquired. Made on a vertical loom over the course of nearly a year by a group of women, its imagery includes dragons (for the masculine principle of the cosmos) and phoenixes (for the receptive, earth-rooted feminine principle). It made such an impression on Winitz that he’s never attempted to sell it.
Part 2
In this episode with Claremont Rug Company, president and founder Jan Winitz and Curious Objects host Benjamin Miller explore myths about rugs, and the symbolic meanings of colors in rugs and importance of signatures. Winitz introduces his Oriental Rug Market Pyramid, which categorizes rugs from high collectible to reproduction levels, illustrating this and other points with four Persian Ferahan Sarouks, each of which represents a different quality level and degree of rarity.
Learn more at Claremont Rug Company’s website: https://www.claremontrug.com/
Jan David Winitz, president/founder of California-based Claremont Rug Company, is an art dealer specializing in art-level, investment-caliber antique Oriental rugs. He is the author of The Guide to Purchasing an Oriental Rug. Winitz received a BA in English and a master’s degree in education at UC Berkeley. In 1980, at age twenty-five, he founded Claremont Rug Company with his wife, Christine Hunt Winitz. They opened Claremont in a small storefront in Oakland to pursue their deepest passion, antique Oriental rugs, and to present them to the public as “works of art comparable to those usually displayed on the wall.” For nearly forty-five years, Winitz built his business around an educational model to assist his clients in learning to hone their own eye for the art of Oriental rugs. Today, his clients reside on six continents. In the collecting world, Winitz is credited with elevating the status of Oriental rugs (c. 1800–c. 1910) from a decorative craft to an art form whose impact and value are on a level with the finest and most sought-after paintings, sculptures, and antique furniture.
