"RUG BRAT!"
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Then
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And Now
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"So, you're a rug brat!", exclaimed a rug collector to me the other day. As "rug brat" was not among the variety of things I'd so far been called by men in my life, I was at first a bit taken aback. I must confess that had I been asked, I might have come up with something other than "brat" to follow "rug" - perhaps more along the lines of "prodigy", "wunderkid" "goddess" or even (God help me) "thirty-something". But still, I couldn't exactly deny my membership in this newly coined category.
As off-hand remarks have their way of entering the psyche, later in the day I found myself deep in thought, reaching back to family lore. This begins when my parents, in 1963, saddled with the appearance of a second baby (yours truly that is), were forced to move to a bigger New York apartment to accommodate the 100% growth in the size of their brood. The story goes that faced with a new and empty dining room to fill, my father bought an Oriental rug at auction. This was the second birth in our family that year - that of my father as the rug collector.
Overcome with the shocking revelation that the whole rug thing was my fault, after all it was my entrance in the world that provided inspiration for my family's uptown emigration and hence the dining room and rug, I became besieged with a series of questions: What is the true nature of a "rug brat" and (echoes of my recent attendance at a Passover Seder. . ."how is this night unlike any other night . . ."), how are these children unlike all other children? Is there potential to tip the balance in the great Nature vs. Nurture debate? After all, when I look in the mirror, I know all too well where this nose and these brows come from, could it follow that there is actually a rug gene? And if so, could there be a type of therapy for people like me? Self-help books? Twelve step programs? Encounter groups (Hi, my name is Brooke, and I am a rug brat. . .)?
If the first step towards coping with being a rug brat is admitting you are one, than the diagnosis is key. And, if we go by the current psychological trend we may comfortably surmise that this requires traveling back to our formative years so we may, well, frankly, blame it all on our parents.
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My Modeling Careerbegan at a very early age. The rule was that every photograph of every rug in my father's collection had to include a person, who as fate would have it, was usually my brother or me. Our task involved either performing some logistical purpose (wearing a saddle bag, picket line style, for example) or simply sitting or standing next to the rug with the goal of adding human charm to the cataloging process. As amateur as our modeling training was, it was serious and, I might add, pioneering stuff - after all these were the days long before the name Vanna White ever passed our lips and role models weren't easy to come by. I settled on Carol Merell of Let's Make a Deal fame (the way she enlivened those stove-top ranges and TV sets behind the Box and the Curtain - talk about a hard act to follow) - God knows how my brother got along - perhaps by way of the Marlborough Man or those "dry look" guys. |
Quicker than a rug therapist can say "how did that make you feel"? I begin to search back, wondering if I ever noticed that other people's family photo albums included scenes, amazingly enough not of rugs, but of picnics in the park, beach vacations, and trips to the Zoo. And speaking of the Zoo, like most kids I too was animal crazy, but how many of my elementary school friends had the kind of menagerie I had of camels, dragons, and unidentifiable two-headed beasts? And while some of my friends had puppies, they never knew the many canines of my world - what with running dog borders, and the exotic Cocker Spandrel, Afghan and Yastik breeds. Fortunately for my parents I'd never heard of "Daghestan" or "Mut" kilims or surely I would have demanded a trip there to get one. On the darker, more dangerous, side of things lurked not the dog catcher but the dreaded animal trappings, and I don't know what other kids did with their dads in the woods on weekends but as for us, well we went rug hunting on Madison Avenue.
Okay, so some kids went swimming at the beach in the Hamptons but our nautical experience was born on the slope of our lawn as we whizzed down the slippery knotted pile of soaped-up rugs with the garden hose aimed on them, and at us. And while those other kids may have climbed on jungle gyms I bet they never knew the sweet freedom of scaling the heights of rug stacks as their fathers engaged in mysterious negotiations with ancient Armenian rug dealers. I read somewhere that the sense of smell is among the very strongest of memory enhancers and I've heard friends wax nostalgic over childhood associations . . . the scent of bread baking in the oven, freshly cut grass, their mother's perfume . . . so can I help it if the smell of moth balls makes me all warm and fuzzy?
And speaking of moths, lest I give the impression that all was safe and rosy, we had our worries, we did. Disease could strike at any time - with the likes of contagious sounding things like "infestation". It wasn't long after learning about Leprosy that "dry-rot" became my number one fear, and of course if prone to catching poison ivy one could never be too careful around a Sumac in the summer months. And all that talk about the dyeing process made me nervous to say the least.
One might think a rug brat more worldly and more savvy about exotic cultures than the average child. But ours was a particular blend of things Islamic and white-bread America. Radio was a big part of our lives, and I never tired of tuning in, in hopes of hearing one of the great rug ensembles - the Cloud Band, the Sara Band and the Carpet Beetles. And how come Sonny and Cher got so much air time over the undoubtedly more promising Hair and Jute?
No doubt my current agnostic attitudes stem from holiday rituals like my mother's brilliant "pin the ornament on the tree of life" - a Christmas game involving a blindfolded child's attempt to place an ornament properly on the Turkish prayer rug hanging on our living room wall. Never having actually met a Muslim or visited a mosque, prayer rugs presented us with one of our most challenging and, as it turns out, expressive modeling poses. We finally settled on kneeling, with clasped hands and humble facial expressions, as though before the Virgin Mary, at the foot of the prayer niche. Of course I knew that kilims were made for Turkish families to use as tablecloths on the tailgates of their station wagons much as we used them under picnic wares in the parking lot at football games.
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To make matters worse, it wasn't until much
later in life that I realized that there was in
fact no connection between the clans of Scotland
and Islamic art to explain the striking sight of
the famous rug collectors McCoy Jones and Joseph
McMullan in matching kilts. And imagine my
surprise when I realized that the occurrence of
this particular brand of 'wise man wearing a
skirt' bore no reference to the donning of what
appeared to be long dresses by the Three Kings as
they rode on camelback to Bethlehem. What did I
know? It was 1970 and minis and maxis were both
in.(l. to r. Joseph V, McMullan (kilt), W. Russell Pickering, H. McCoy Jones, Ralph Yohe.) |
And speaking of the sexes, some people's fathers had affairs but as for mine, well, he did rugs. I suppose this was harmless enough. All happy dysfunctional families have there battle cries, and ours, or my mother's at least, was: "What! Another rug? How could you?". I think I first learned about the whole Sex, Rugs and Rock and Roll thing during one of these outbursts, when my father excused his latest rug purchase with the unlikely defense of "well, at least it's not other women" and my mother retorted "but if they were other women at least they wouldn't be rolled up side by side under my bed!"
Time went by and like most teenagers I rebelled. In one phase, I frequented certain friend's houses just to feel the surreptitious thrill of wall-to-wall carpeting under my bare feet. But somehow, even during my most thorough investigating of the generation gap, no matter how hard I tried; I just couldn't seem to reject rugs as easily as I could things like homework, piano lessons, and curfews. But the final wrinkle in my campaign of rebellion came with my first invitation to accompany my father and fellow rug lover Ralph Yohe on a collecting trip to Morocco. Figuring that if Jimi Hendrix had liked Morocco so would I, I set off for Marrakech, comforted by the thought that any self-respecting member of the counter-culture would have done the same, even if it did mean being seen in the company of a middle aged rug collector puffing on a cigar while parading around the rug market in the latest in golf attire.
Looking back on it, I suppose it's only natural that during various phases of my life I tried to deny my true calling. But while denial has its virtues, there's nothing sweeter than giving oneself over to destiny, as I did when I became a rug dealer a few of years ago.
So here I am, living, breathing, and loving this thing called rugs. Lately, when friends visit and I watch their children play hopscotch on my rugs and climb on the piles that are my inventory, I just shrug and make a silent prayer - if I ever have kids you can skip the nose and the brows, but what the hell. . . Allah grant them the rug gene!
Editor's Note: Brooke Pickering is perhaps the top dealer in Moroccan Rugs in the world today. Her gallery is at 16 East 23rd Street, New York, N.Y., 10010 where she sees people by appointment.
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Thanks and best wishes,
J. Barry O'Connell Jr.
