RugNotes: The Prague Post Online

RugNotes: The Prague Post Online: "Thursday, November 18, 2004
The Prague Post Online
The Prague Post Online: "A market niche turns into a magic carpet ride

Ehsan Abrar built the best carpet store in the country by appealing to his customers' good taste

Abrar brings a designer's sensibilities and a surgeon's skill to his trade.
By Mindy Kay Bricker
For The Prague Post
Over 40 years ago, Ehsan Abrar's brother called from Germany with a simple request: His professor wanted a Persian carpet and needed Abrar, who lived in Iran, to send a selection.

Bought. Sent. Sold. Done.

Then a 20-year-old student of German literature at Teheran University, Abrar and his brother, who was 18 and studying at a technical university in Germany, soon discovered they were on to a lucrative idea. Within months, Abrar was supplying the merchandise for his brother's carpet store in Karlsruhe, Germany.

The international request, though the first, "was not strange to us. We knew the material -- we grew up with carpets," Abrar says, referring both to Iran's second-biggest export (after oil) and his grandfather's business.

Now 63 years old and surrounded by thousands of Persian carpets in Perske Koberce u Manesa, his immaculate Prague 1 store, Abrar has parlayed his background and experience into an enviable position as the Czech Republic's largest dealer of Persian carpets. He sells both new and old carpets from Iran, some of which are one of a kind.

"Our advantage is our experience," he says. "I know the [customers'] taste. I know where they can get the best quality. I have the advantage of where to buy and how to buy. I have the background -- a tradition of carpets."

Restoring fine taste

With a glance and a stroke, Abrar can estimate the value of a rug as skillfully as most people can determine the ripeness of a tomato. By its design, he can tell you the carpet's origin, and by its feel, he can tell you the anatomy of the wool. The highest-quality wool comes from a sheep's neck and shoulders, the lowest from its stomach.

With such inherent knowledge, it was clear to Abrar that there was a market niche in Prague when he visited for the first time six years ago. And like most people visiting the city for the first time, he fell in love with Prague.

Immediately after the government collapsed in 1989, Abrar explains, Dutch antique collectors worked their way through the country buying furniture and carpets at bargain prices. And there were plenty of bargains to be had.

Before communism, Abrar says, Czechs "had a history of purchasing nice things." In particular, they had quality home furnishings. "They have the culture, and they always valued good things, carpets and especially furniture."
PERSKE KOBERCE U MANESA

Owner: Ehsan Abrar
Where: MyslIkova 3, Prague 1
Tel: 272 735 226
Web: www.koberceumanesa.cz

But by the time Abrar arrived, the antique market, including all the best carpets, "was all dried out; there was nothing left."

Abrar took this liquidation of fine taste as a sign that he could have a profitable future selling Persian carpets in Prague. Though he won't disclose his earnings, he says that his business has grown every year. This can be seen in his location and his stock. Abrar moved from Prague 10 to a store near the river in Prague 1 with a repair studio around the corner. He stocks around 5,000 pieces, including an American Sparuk -- a carpet for which in the 1920s an American company created the design and color scheme and placed orders for thousands to be made in Iran. The Sparuk was only sent to the United States; one is displayed in his store, in perfect condition, for 250,000 Kc.

Carpet surgeon

If a repair is complicated, particularly with an antique carpet, Abrar sends it home to Iran. But carpet weaving and producing is not foreign to the Czech Republic. Abrar says that he's found 70-year-old Czech carpets and tapestries, including some made in Bohemia that depict wealthy people picnicking or living in a pastoral setting.

"They had schools for carpet making," Abrar says, "even during communism."

Today, the country's textile-school graduates trickle in looking for jobs in his repair shop, which is the nucleus of his operation. Standing in the repair studio, it's easy to imagine how excited Abrar must have been as a child when visiting his grandfather during summer vacations. He and his siblings would go to various villages with their grandfather to commission carpet weavers, who would humor the children and teach them to weave.

Though he can weave a carpet very slowly, Abrar seems even more fascinated by the complexity and intricate process of repairs. Three rugs lay on three workstations; like a doctor, he is intimately acquainted with each. And each has a diagnosis: age, tread, moths.

"I wanted to become a doctor, and I would have liked to become a surgeon," Abrar says of his university days and young aspirations. Now, surrounded by his country and family heritage, he modestly shrugs: "So it didn't happen."

At least not in the way anyone expected.

Mindy Kay Bricker can be reached at realestate@praguepost.com"