Carpet Diem
Tales from the World of Oriental Rugs
(amazon)George Bradley (View Bio)
Hardcover: HarperCollins, 2025.
One day, prize-winning poet George Bradley took notice of a carpet that had been beneath his feet for decades. Carefully studying its weave and pattern, he was startled by the artistry behind it—a fascination and curiosity that unexpectedly sent him on a thrilling adventure and introduced him to a little-known realm in which beauty, artistry, business, and history collide.
Carpet Diem chronicles Bradley's captivating journey through a land of oriental carpets where he fell in love—not only with a collection of magnificent rugs but their histories—including the dealers, collectors, scroungers, restorers, and connoisseurs connected to them. As he brings together his own story with that of these artworks, he recalls the compelling history of Central Asia itself. Like Scheherazade, Bradley spins story after story about the rich beauty found on the floors of mansions across Europe and America, identifying what’s draped in the portraits of Titian and Vermeer, unearthing hidden treasures in the faraway caves of Persia and Afghanistan, and revealing secrets lying under piles in bespoke shops in the wealthy enclaves of Manhattan, the Hamptons, and Westport, Connecticut.
Weaving the mesmerizing storytelling of The Arabian Nights with the fascinating pilgrimage of history that unfolds in The Silk Road and the dramatic compulsion to possess rare elegance that propels The Orchid Thief, Bradley's Carpet Diem is an unusual and gorgeous memoir of understanding and relishing the warp and woof of the world.
"An unexpectedly engrossing account of a decades-long preoccupation with carpets, their history and lore, and the author's interactions with kindred connoisseurs, dealers, restorers, and disreputable players in the trade.... Bradley’s personal journey of discovery, learning, bargaining, acquisition, and lamentation, which began in 2003, is fascinating. Even those not immediately drawn to the subject will find his weave hard to resist. Carpet isn’t a product so much as a culture of considerable complexity, and Carpet Diem is an education. Bradley’s take on the strategies of bargaining—a chess (or fencing) match with feints and misdirection, moves and countermoves—is particularly enjoyable. Fine carpets, says the author, are a testament to painstaking manual skill: ‘There’s nothing that requires more craftsmanship than weaving a fine oriental carpet….As decorative items, they go in and out of fashion, but collectors have never abandoned them.’ Bradley’s prose is crisp, fresh as a new loaf of bread, and not without a certain elegance of description. He can paint vivid word pictures, especially of New England and Asia. Bradley augments his book with engaging asides, a detailed appendix, a glossary of terms, a bibliography, and 11 full-color photographs. The allure of artisanal rugs is afforded the treatment it deserves." — Kirkus Reviews
"Bradley unfurls a rich and surprisingly intimate account of his entry into the world of oriental rug-collecting. After his interest was sparked by a Persian throw rug inherited from his great-grandfather, what began as an ‘absorbing distraction from life’s adamantine realities’ morphed into a fixation that brought him around the world; into contact with unscrupulous salespeople, devoted artisans, and colorful fellow obsessives; and often into conversation with the past (‘An antique kilim’ can make ‘you feel you are shaking hands with history’). What emerge most vividly are the detailed portraits of the relationships he forms (after an Iranian rug salesman he’d been in touch with disappears without a trace, Bradley ‘keep[s] thinking I’ve caught a glimpse of him: sitting in the last row of a country auction, hovering at the edge of the crowd at an antiques fair’) and his genuine reverence for the meticulousness of the craft (‘Weaving is a medium in which one cannot revise. You can touch up a canvas or rewrite a stanza, but you can’t... erase your mistakes while making a carpet without tearing it apart’). Elevated by a poet’s patient attention to detail, it’s a captivating window into the culture and history of an artisanal craft. This will appeal to anyone who’s fallen deeply for a new passion." — Publishers Weekly
