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Turkish rugs

Since the days of the Crusades, Constantinople, "the Queen of the Bosporus," has been the central market place and shipping point for all the products of the Orient.

Here came the merchant princes of Venice and London and Vienna, or their agents, to bargain for spices and silks and carpets. In old inventories we can still read of "fifty Turkey carpets," but of these fifty many may have been Persian or Turkestan or Caucasian.

The Turks were prolific weavers, and most of the rugs pic­tured in Flemish and Italian paintings look Turkish in design, but few of these early rugs are in existence today.