“Carpets have long been one of the most popular and visible aspects of Islamic art, prized in the west since Venetian merchants brought them from Persia in the 14th century. The rug and carpet trade exists at many levels, ranging from the ubiquitous high street ‘carpet liquidation sale’ to museum-quality pieces sold at Christie’s and Sotheby’s or through a tight network of private dealers. Even at an expensive level, carpets are most commonly bought as home decoration, and the collecting of rare and important historical pieces is restricted to museums and a few wealthy private individuals. ‘Collectibles and historical carpets represent only about 5% of the trade’, says Simon Franses of ‘S. Franses’, the Jermyn Street gallery that has been at the top end of the London trade for three generations. ‘There is no question that the strongest buyer of historical carpets has been the Museum for Islamic art in Doha, Qatar’, he adds [...].”
 
Lucian Harris