Hezen Cave Hotel

1. To acquire an old Cave house in Cappadocia, Turkey
2. And turn it into an Unique Design Cave Hotel

I spent the first half of the year in structuring, re-decorating the hotel and the second half of the year in building the management team, working out the marketing and managing this new venture.

Let me explain what I mean by Unique Design Cave Hotel.

1. Cave Hotel - The rooms are dig in the volcanic rock and guests sleep in a cave room. This is actually how most people in Cappadocia used to live. The cave is very solid and Cave rooms are really great place to sleep in. The temperature is warm in winter while being cool in summer heat. When I sleep one night in a Cave room, I really feel like I rested for a week! I believe the rock and cave has some magical resting power.
2. Design -  There are many Cave Hotels in Cappadocia, but I always felt that most of them looked very similar. Typically, you have the “Anatolian” style with carpets and dark wooden furniture. I found this quite boring and wanted something different, more colorful and design oriented.
3. Unique – Guests must have an unique experience of staying in a Cave Hotel. This is not simply another hotel or B&B. Our guests come from all around the world and have high expectations about sleeping in a Cave! The service, breakfast, hotel design, it’s terraces, staff and their experience should all be unique and exceptional!

So, Hezen Cave Hotel opened in May 2011, with 10 rooms. It is located in the Ortahisar village overlooking the ancient rock castle of Ortahisar. Ortahisar is actually at the centre of Cappadocia – but it is a very quite village compare to the other location in Cappadocia. It is not crowded and has kept its original small village.

If you ever come to Cappadocia, please visit our Cave Hotel and spend some time on our terrace! Here are some pictures for your consideration.

Lobby & Reception

Hezen Cave Hotel - Ortahisar Castle View

Cave Suite Room

A Twin room

Lobby seats

Terrace view at Hezen Cave

Cave Room

Cave Room

Living room of a Suite room

Outdoor breakfast terraces

Marble Cave Bathrooms

Double Cave Room

You will find more pictures and details on Hezen Cave Hotel website or our Facebook page!

I am not going to advise you to send you beautiful oriental rug to a specialist cleaner either? You can wash it yourself – but the old way, I mean “manually”! It is actually cheap and quite simple to wash a rug. The “traditional way” of washing a rug means simply to use cold water, a brush and soap (or hair shampoo).

How to wash your rug and make sure that you won’t damage it?

• Lay down your rug outside on the floor,
• Prepare a brush, cold water and normal soap (aka Marseille Soap) or hair shampoo – don’t use these special rug shampoos (hair shampoo work much better and it’s probably safer),
• Start by pouring some water on your rug,
• Once it is wet, pour a bit of soap or hair shampoo,
• Brush well the front and the back of your rug for at least 5 minutes.
• After 5 minutes of brushing, start pouring lots of water to take off the soap or shampoo. You will need lots of water as your rug will probably absord the soap. Make sure that no soap or shampoo remains.
• Once it’s cleaned hang your rug vertically in the shadow on a wall for at least 5 hours. You need to make sure that it is dry. Don’t hang it on sun light as its colours may fade.
• Once dry, lay it down on the floor and brush it dry in the direction of its pile. You should see its beautiful colours revitalised and your rug cleaned.

It’s that simple to wash you rug, so don’t bother bringing it to speacialists cleaners. It’s not worthed unless you have a stain that remains after washing it with traditional methods.

I hope these advise will save you money and help you in your summer rug wash!

You can see some hand-tufted rugs here.

A gun to make a rug? What’s the story behind these so-called hand-tufted rugs ?

A “hand-tufted rug” is created without tying knots at all, but rather using a “tufting gun” and pushing wool or acrylic yarn through a primary backing, creating a “tuft”. Then, a latex glue is applied to hold the “tufts” in place (this is not really what I can call an environment-friendly rug). Finally the top of the tufts is trimmed to create the pile.
Here is a video I found on youtube where you can see someone trying out a “tufting gun”.

I don’t have any problem with people buying machine made rugs, IF they are aware of what they buy. If you buy a hand-tufted rug and expect it to be handmade, you got it really wrong!

So what is a real handmade rug?

Well, as you may know, real handmade rugs are made by people with their hand and fingers tying knots (or embroideries) one after the other. Here is a good video example of what it means to knot a rug.

Things to remember about hand-tufted rugs

• Hand-tufted rugs are NOT handmade at all but “gun” made – also considered as machine made.
• Will I bet that in 5 years your hand-tufted rug will still be in good condition? No. On the other hand a real hand-made rug will last for years – even hundred years.
• Can you wash your hand-tufted rug and be sure of not having any parts dismantling? I wouldn’t guarantee that – remember it is simply glued.
• Hand-tufted rugs are really cheap because you can mass produce them very fast using the tufting gun.
• If you see a website with the exact same rug available at different sizes, you can almost be sure that it is not handmade.

I thought it’s worth explaining some of these words and what they really mean. This particular post is about the rugs knots density and how it is measured.

What is “knots density”?

Knots density is the number of knots a carpet has for a given metric. You can compare this to the number of pixels you have in your camera. The more pixels you have, the more detailed your picture will be.

Knots density makes sense when your rug has knots (Gordes or Turkish double knots, Persian single knots or other type of knots). You cannot really speak of knots density for rugs that are weaved like Kilim rugs or embroidered like Soumak or Suzani rugs.

Does it really matter? Is it a quality indicator?

Well, Yes and No! Some people say that the higher the density of knots, the better the quality of your rug is. This is not really true: you cannot only use knots density as an indicator of quality. To give you an example, a bad quality Kayseri rug with high knots density can be cheaper than a good quality Dosemealti Nomad carpet with lower knots density. This is like comparing apples with pears. Having said that, within the same category, the same origins and with other quality factors being similar, knots density matters.

Wool Hereke rug with high density

Low knots density Shirvan rug

Depending on the material used in a rug – wool, cotton warp or silk – you would expect various knot density. Silk by nature is thiner than wool – so you should expect higher density of knots in Silk rugs than in Wool rugs.  Here you can see what I would consider as a “high density rug”.

High knots density Silk rugs would start from

• 100 knots per square cm
• or 1,000,000 knots per square meter
• or 645 knots per square inch (KPSI)

High knots density for Wool rugs starts from

• 25 knots per square cm (equivalent to what is below)
• or 250,000 knots per square meter
• or 160 knots per square inch (KPSI)

Are you lost in all these metrics? Let’s see how to estimate a rug knot density.

In order to calculate the “knot density”, you simply have to count the number of knots you have per square metric choosen.

Usually, the knots density is expressed as:

1. Knots per square cm – or Knots per square meter
2. Knots per Square Inch (KPSI) – or Knots per Square Foot.

Let’s go through these metrics.

1. Knots per square cm (or Knots per square meter): You simply “draw” a square of 1 cm by 1 cm on the back of your rug and count the number of knots that fits in this square. For example, if you count 25 knots within this square, then you will have a density of 25 knots per square cm.
   Convert Knots per square cm to Knots per square meter: 25 knots per square cm is equivalent to 25 * 100 * 100 = 250,000 knots per square meter.
2. Knots per Square Inch (KPSI). Similar to the previous point, in this case, you “draw” a square of 1 inch by 1 inch and count the number of knots that fit in.
   Convert KPSI to Knots per square cm: 400 KSPI is equivalent to (400 / 2.54) / 2.54 = 400 / 6.4516 = 62.0 Knots per square cm. Bear in mind that 1 cm is 2.54 times smaller than 1 Inch so you have to divide.
   Convert KPSI to Knots per square Foot: There are 12 inches in 1 foot so 400 KPSI is equivalent to 400 * 12 * 12 = 400 * 144 = 57,600 Knots per Square Foot.

Let’s recap all the conversions:

• Convert knots per square cm to knots per Square meter: multiply by 10,000
• Convert knots per square Inch (KPSI) to knots per square cm: divide by 6.4516.
• Convert knots per square Inch (KPSI) to knots per square Foot: multiply by 144.

Let’s go through an example – How many knots does your 6′ by 9′ rug have?

Let’s say you have a rug that is 6′ by 9′ (6 foot by 9 foot – or 183 cm by 274 cm) with an estimated 400 KPSI (Knots per Square Inch). How many knots your rug has?

• 6′ by 9′ rug means that your rug is 6*9 = 54 square foot.
• Convert the KPSI to Knots per Square foot: 400 * 144 = 57,600 Knots per square foot
• So your rug has a total estimate of 54 * 57,600 = 3,110,400 knots! Yes that’s over 3 million knots.

I hope this post will make it easier to understand KPSI and knots density. Do you know how many knots your rug has in total? Go and count it and let me know

Volcanic rock used by people as home

Cappadocia has an incredible volcanic-created landscape of fairy chimneys, natural stone castles and underground dwellings of ancient civilizations and early Christian hideouts. It is one of those unique places on Earth where nature and humans lived in harmony over the years and left over amazing traces of Civilizations and Culture.

What are the absolute 10 things to do in Cappadocia?

I am really not a “Seal addict” person. Most websites pay to get some sort of Seal from “trusted large organization” simply to increase their sales. There are plenty of providers that check your website (in terms of security or basic technology) and provide you with an “expensive seal”. I think these seals don’t mean much – But the one from Rug Rag is different!

Let me first introduce RugRag – quoting from their About Us page:

RugRag.com was created in 2007 by brothers Matthew and David Dilmaghani in an effort to provide accurate information on and about hand made Oriental Rugs.  It’s all too often that shoppers find incorrect or misleading information all across the Internet from eBay auctions to online stores to classifieds and even news sources.  The goal of Rug Rag is to create market transparency in what has traditionally been a “buyer beware” marketplace.

This is exactly our aim with our online website (check our values in About page). So we had something in common

Why does this Seal matter to me?

1. It is specific to the rug industry – Rug Rag know what they are speaking about – so what they say has more value (at least to me) than those common seals you get from Verisign or others.
2. We got it totally free of charge – and you can’t get it simply by paying. I think this is another sign of quality and fair approval.
3. Before approving CarpetView, Rug Rag did a detailed review of the site and asked many questions to clarify. For example, they wanted to know how our return policy work, or what we decide to call Antique or Semi-antique rugs, etc…
4. At the end of this review, Rug Rag provided some recommendations on what to change or clarify on our website. These were very accurate and helped us in making the website more transparent and open.

So the bottom line: I am very happy that we got approved as a trusted and verified seller by Rug Rag. This somehow is to me the equivalent to get approved as Eco-Friendly from Green Peace but applied to the rug industry.

Thank you Rug Rag for your effort and this certification!

Lots of buyers and tourists visiting rug producing countries ask themselves the same question. Some travel guides will advice you to bargain but they won’t tell you how.

The key question I guess is not how to haggle but how to buy a handmade rug? While in some shops you will need to bargain to get a fair price, in others the dealer will already provide you a good price.

I think if you follow some basic rules, you can’t go much wrong:

1. Learn about rugs – know what you want to buy – get as many information as you can. The more you know about various qualities, material used, type of rugs, colours, designs, age, etc.. the easier it will be to buy or haggle for your rug.
2. Visit few dealers and compare their rugs using some benchmarks. It is sometimes difficult to compare shops as each rug will have a different quality, design, size, colour and shape. Instead, what you can do, is to find 2 or 3 items that are comparable with most rug stores. This will be your benchmark to estimate how the rug dealer prices its stock.
3. Ask yourself: Does the seller care about returning customers or he simply wants to sell a rug at the highest price (without caring what happens after)?
4. Check dealers credentials: Lots of new dealers don’t last long. An experienced dealer will care about his reputation and provide you with quality rugs at good price.
5. Don’t be fooled with “official or non-official” authentication certificates. Most of the time, a certificate is simply a piece of paper. Quality handmade rugs are quality handmade rugs – no certificate is required to assess that.
6. Mind the so-called “Rug Factory”. Some large stores are presenting themselves as “rug factories” (or as State owned rug factories) and claim to produce real authentical rugs. Most of the time, they hire few women to weave some rugs in their premises and demonstrate how they produce these rugs. This is simply a “show”. Do the math yourself – if there are only 10 women knotting in this so-called Factory, and considering that it takes several months to knot one rug, how can this factory produce over 5,000 rugs? The answer is simple – these stores are not factories, they just buy these rugs like any other dealer and sell them.
7. Don’t jump too fast on what you like. This is something I learnt myself as a buyer. When you like a rug in a shop, try to focus first on other rugs. If you show that you like something too quickly, it will reduce your bargaining power. A good way to proceed is to focus on what you like less (asking questions and prices about these other items) and see the reaction of the dealer. Once you feel more confident and spend some time in the shop, you can then jump on your favorite rug.
8. Follow your instinct. When you feel that the dealer is honest and the rug is of good quality – just follow your instinct. I think that we- humans – have  great instinct to detect trust and quality.
9. Buy only if you really like – or love. A good quality rug last for years, even hundred years. So it’s important that you like what you buy as you will live with it for many years.

These are basic tips on how to buy a handmade rug – much can be said about this topic – but I think the most important is to enjoy the process of buying. Handmade rugs are really beautiful and buying one is an experience that you should enjoy.

Have you ever buy a rug? Please comment below. I would love to know more about your experience.

Suzanis are flat embroidery rugs that comes from Central Asia – Uzbekistan. In this post I will not go through the history of Suzani rugs but if you are interested you can read it here. You can also see how Suzani can decorate your house on Karen’s blog.

What I want to share with you is the beauty of the Suzanis.

I like Suzani rugs because of their fine embroideries and unconventional motifs. There are actually 2 types of Suzanis:

1. Suzani embroidered with simple needles
2. Suzanis embroidered using Crochet needles

Let’s take some examples and go through the details of these embroideries.

1. Silk Suzani with floral and Pomegranate motifs – simple needle embroideries

Pomegranate Silk Suzani rug

Zooming into the embroideries reveals all the beauty of this pomegranate embroidery:

Pomegranate Suzani motif

2. Crochet needle Silk Suzani with finest Embroideries

Beautiful Crochet needle Silk Suzani

When you look closely, you can see how tiny and fine are the embroideries made by a crochet needle:

Beautiful Crochet needle Silk Suzani flower

As you can see with the details above, good quality silk Suzani embroideries have great details and are beautiful pieces of art. Suzani made with Crochet needles tend to have finer details then Suzanis embroidered with normal needles.

Usually, Suzanis have floral designs but sometimes you can also find some animals motifs in some Suzanis. Here is a good example of a Suzani with Camels that represents the Silk road trade Caravans.

3. Silk Suzani that represents the Silk road Trade Caravans with Camels and traders

Silk Suzani rug with Silk Road trade Caravans of Camels

As you can see in this picture below, this Suzani reflects the trade Camel Caravans crossing on the Silk Road:

Silk Suzani rug with Silk Road trade Caravans of Camels

Or here:

Silk Suzani rug with Silk Road trade Caravans of Camels

These Camel caravans remind me the pictures of Suzan Hardman from Central Asia – Altai area. If interested, you can see other Suzani pictures in our Flickr account.

Do you like Suzanis too? Let me know what you think about them!

Let’s think a bit. All these amazing handmade rugs are made by talented Women. They are the artists behind the scene that produce these magical rugs! When I see all our rugs, I want to say a BIG THANK YOU to all those weavers for expressing themselves and giving us these beautiful rugs.

How can we celebrate this special day? I think a good way is to give a unique – one-time special voucher of $ 100 [for all purchase above 190$] to any women that would like to share our passion and buy from our store. 

So if you are interested in getting this one-time $100 voucher – usable only the 8th of March and only if you are a woman, just comment below, or send us an e-mail to info [at] carpetview.com .

Handmade rug weavers in Turkey, Central Asia or Asia have all been through a learning process. Traditionally, this talent used to be passed on from mothers to daughters at young ages. It is still the case in some countries. 

I wanted to share this video of a talented weaver that knots a Turkish rug with double-knots (more on this coming soon). Some of you may think that the video is running fast, but actually there it’s her real speed.

She is simply fast and very talented!! Bravo!