complete the carpeting of a Persian room, being
placed on either side of a centre rug, with two shorter strips at the top
and bottom. More fine specimens of these long strips are now to be
found than of smaller sizes, and they should not be neglected by the
collector. By artistic arrangement and device they will accommodate
themselves to almost any house, somewhere, and few choicer prizes can be
bought to-day.

[Illustration:

PLATE IV.
ANTIQUE SEHNA
FROM THE COLLECTION OF THE AUTHOR
Size: 2.4 x 3.1

This is apparently one side of a pillow. The other side, which is also in
the possession of the author, is exactly similar, except that the colours
are reversed, the medallion being red and the corners blue. This mat has
33 to 36 knots to the running inch, making over 1,000 to the square inch,
or more than a million knots in the small piece.]

The Persians are eminently the best rugs to buy. They are usually finer
and more closely woven than the others, and more graceful in design, and
seem to show a more refined and aristocratic art. The Kirmans would be the
first choice, and are to the rug dealer what diamonds are to the jeweller,
a staple article which he must keep in stock, and which finds a ready
sale. But even were it possible to buy a true diamond Kirman, the very
catholicity of taste to which diamonds and Kirmans appeal detract from
their merit in the eyes of those who seek for more individuality. For the
new Kirmans, fine, soft, and clean as they look, are all very much alike,
and mostly copies or variations of a few particular antique forms, with a
floriated medallion in the centre, or a full floriated panel, and
floriated corners. A familiar design is a vase of flowers in graceful
spread, with birds perching on the sprays. Or, again, they show some
adaptation of "the tree of life." This symbolical figure appears in many
forms, now denuded of its leaves like the "barren fig tree," and covering
the whole rug, and now in smaller form as "the cypress tree," or the
sacred "cocos," three or more to each rug, in full foliage and looking for
all the world like certain wooden fir trees. It needs only the combination
of these trees with the stiff wooden animals, far more wonderful than Noah
ever knew, and tiny human figures, which might be Shem, Ham, and Japhet,
all of which adorn these rugs, to remind one of the Noah's ark of
childhood. Representations of birds, men, and animals never appear on
Turkish r