Rugs
Buy and sell rugs in Panama.
On the porcelain and ceramic tile that covers most Panamanian floors, a rug is often the only soft thing in the room, which is why one under the sofa or beside the bed changes a home more than its price suggests. Hand-knotted wool, tufted rugs that only look handmade, jute, flat-woven kilims and outdoor rugs for a terrace change hands new and pre-owned. Almost anything with a medallion in the middle gets called Persian, so the back of the rug tells you more than the listing title does.
Hand-knotted, tufted and machine-made rugs:
three ways of making a rug account for nearly everything sold as one, and they age very differently. A hand-knotted rug, whether Persian, Turkish, Pakistani or Afghan, has every knot tied onto the warp, the pattern shows almost as clearly on the back as on the front, and the fringe is the warp itself running out of the ends. A hand-tufted rug is wool punched through a canvas with a tool and held by a layer of latex glue under a cloth backing: soft and handsome, but the glue is what eventually gives out. Machine-made rugs in polypropylene or polyester are most of what furniture stores stock, including many of the medallion designs sold as Persian, with a sewn-on fringe and a stiff, even back. Kilims and cotton dhurries are flat-woven, with no pile, and usually reversible. Jute and sisal bring texture but mark with water. Outdoor rugs in polypropylene go on a terrace and get hosed down; for the cushions on the furniture around them, see cushions and pillows.
Wool, viscose and a rug pad on tile:
wool springs back under a coffee table and hides dirt; polypropylene costs less and shrugs off spills, which is why it suits a dining room with children. Be wary of viscose, often sold as bamboo silk or art silk: the sheen is lovely, but a spilled glass or a wet mop crushes the pile and leaves yellow patches that rarely come out. On tile, every rug slides, so budget for a non-slip pad cut a little smaller than the rug, which also stops grit from grinding the back. If a room needs softening at the window as well as on the floor, curtains and blinds do the rest.
Machine-made prices against a hand-knotted rug:
a machine-made living-room rug of about five by eight feet, or 160 by 230 centimetres, runs from around $150 to $350 new in furniture stores, and hand-knotted wool of the same size starts in four figures. That difference widens once they are used. A synthetic rug with flattened traffic lanes cannot be washed back to new and resells for little, while a hand-knotted rug can be washed, rewoven at a worn edge and refringed, so a sound one holds much of its value for decades.
The back of a used rug, the fringe and the smell:
turn it over first. A crisp pattern on the back means hand-knotted; a canvas or cloth backing means tufted, and if bending a corner makes it crackle or drop a fine dust, the latex is breaking down. A fringe stitched on along a seam is machine-made, whatever the label says. On wool, look for bare patches or fine webbing where furniture stood, the sign of moths. Mist a corner with water and smell it: pet urine wakes up when damp, and a UV torch shows the stains. Colour bleeding into a pale field means the rug sat wet, and a front much paler than the back means years in the sun.
A rug listing photographed from above and from behind:
lay it flat in daylight and shoot it whole from a chair or a stair, then add the back, a corner, the fringe and any fault up close. Give the size in both feet and centimetres, since buyers compare against furniture-store labels in either. Say what it is made of, whether it lived with pets or smokers, and when it was last professionally washed. Vacuum both sides and hand it over rolled and tied, never folded: a fold sets a crease across the pile and can crack the latex on a tufted rug, right at the corner a careful buyer will bend first.