essay on rug collecting

[fiefoe]

"Whoever Has The Most Rugs When He Dies Wins" / Lawrence Kearney

• Without form, without selection and the clarity that comes from letting go, an essential creative element is missing from a person's collecting.
• the intellectual and emotional limitations of certainty
• In the same way that intellectual certainty can prove to be an impediment to one's curiosity and openness of inquiry, good taste can breed a complacency of aesthetic inquiry -- in other words, Snobbery.
• Great Oriental rugs are only the best because they stand on the shoulders of rugs that are note quite as good.
• This seems as good a place as any to put forward a pet theory, which perhaps makes up in cynicism what it lacks in originality: namely, that in most forms of intense human endeavor Narcissism must never be overlooked as a ferocious motivational force.
  
• The main problem with an obsessive pursuit of the beautiful, I believe, is that it cuts us off from the real source of aesthetic appreciation, which is delight. The sad fact is, obsession is not delight.