Recycled Houses Make Great Furniture!

Sunday’s are our one day off, so they are generally good days.  A short while back I spent all day with a friend who has made himself something of an expert on tribal rugs.  We went to the outskirts of the city to look at furniture workshops.  Here, when a house is torn down, they don’t just crush everything and toss it in a dumpster.  They dismantle all the carved wooden doors and window pieces and save what can be reused.  These are then turned into furniture: cabinets, shelving, tables. All very cool stuff.  So we went to the outskirts of Islamabad to where they take these pieces and reuse them.  Some of the items in these workshops are antiques in their own right and will be sold as is.  Old children’s beds, spinning wheels, chests.  The most amazing pieces are the very large door frames.  These can easily be 13 ft high and 10 ft wide and intricately carved.  I’d love to pick one of these up but shipping it to the states would be something of a challenge.  I like that these everyday, very artistic pieces are being reused.  In America we tend to tear down buildings and scrap it all.  I remember when they did that to the Beacon Street Hotel in my hometown, marble and hardwood floors were just destroyed in the interest of tearing the building down quickly, so that the lot could remain vacant for 30+ years.  Some of the workshops we saw had pieces obviously not old, but made to look older by weathering them.  The rest of that day was spent in various carpet shops.  There is one piece that I really like.  It is not cheap though.  It’s a 3’ by 10’ runner they are asking $1800 for.  It’s Turkmen, quite old, very nice.  I’ll probably get it.  Damn.  Addiction is such an ugly word… I prefer fondness.  I am fond of rugs.  One of my room mates commented today on my traveling out to the fringes of the city to look at old shit.  He mentioned that I seem to still have the very young sense of curiosity/adventure.  Yup.  I hope I never out grow that.  When I stop being curious, it’s time to lie down and die.

And with that in mind the Turkmen we went to look at furniture workshops with that day sees no reason I shouldn’t travel anywhere I like.  He said even Afghanistan was much safer now than it was last time I was there in 2009.  He thinks I should definitely see the northern areas of Pakistan as well as Lahore.  It’s interesting to me that most of the carpet and furniture vendors here are Turkmen and not Pashtun or Punjabi.  They all think I should visit Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.  I think I need to visit all of them in the not too distant future.  Turkmen are pretty easy to spot here.  They typically have light skin, almond eyes and often grey eye color.  The ones born up north are also generally well educated.  I find I like them though they can be opinionated and a bit bigoted toward Pashtuns and Punjabis.  Funny, I find myself drawn to a part of the world that was never taught to us in schools.  These are the lands that were big blank spots in the history books we read in high school.  We were taught that Marco Polo left Venice, traveled through Anatolia and was then transported miraculously to the court of the Kublai Khan.  The majority of his journey is completely ignored even though he was traveling through cities vastly older than Venice. 

 

So anyway, I think I’ll be purchasing some furniture while I am here.  I don’t yet know how I’ll ship it but having furniture made from much older furnishings has a draw I can’t ignore.