Catalina Rug

1.What inspired you to begin your Persian rug collection?

We had bare hardwood floors in our first home, a 1922 bungalow style home with small rooms.

We had inherited a couple of Persian rugs from my French grandmother and decided the rugs were so appropriate and beautiful that we would go with more Persian carpets when we could afford to decorate the next room.

The carpets could move with us should we acquire a larger home (which we eventually did).

2.How long have you been collecting rugs and how many rugs do you own so far?

We purchased our first Persian rugs in 1970, an antique piece we “fell in love with”; we were graduate students and really could not afford the rug, but sometimes art trumps rationality.

I believe we have purchased at least 14 rugs from Catalina Rug, and prior to happening on your website we purchased several rugs that have since been passed on to other family members.

3.What particular selection criteria do you have when buying a rug? Please share your tips and tricks with other rug enthusiasts.

Our prime criteria is size and does the rug align with our conception of “beauty”.

Truthfully, we consider these rugs to be “floor art“. We also choose rugs with a higher knot count because the patterns are more vividly rendered. If we have two rugs of different origin in a given room it does not bother us; one can display several paintings on a wall with no degree of harmony among them (of course these is merely our opinion).

Some of the rugs we find most beautiful we cannot afford, so we look to the next closest example that we can afford; who would not love to marvel daily at a vivid silk or silk/wool rug?

4.Why did you Choose Catalina?

We found your website to be so well done, your photographic representation of the rugs is matchless. Your highly informative synopsis of a given rug is also superlative.

We like your website so well that we don’t even explore those of your competitors; are their prices competitive or even better?

Frankly, we don’t care, because we know exactly what we are getting when we order a rug from Catalina and have never been disappointed. (We also now appreciate the extensive explanations of the various rug producing regions and what highlights each type of carpet,)

5.Why Persian Rugs?

Well, we are partial to Persian rugs for many reasons, a couple being quality and attractiveness (beauty), and range of expression. We also have purchased “tribal” or non-Persian rugs from Catalina and have been quite pleased with them as well.