About NERS  

The New England Rug Society is an informal organization of people interested in enriching their knowledge and appreciation of antique oriental rugs and ethnographic textiles. Founded in 1985 as the New Boston Rug Society, it has since grown to more than 170 members from throughout New England who share a common love of the traditional creative textile arts.

NERS members gather six to eight times each year at informal meetings which usually feature a speaker and focus on a particular theme related to the rug and textile field. All participants are encouraged to bring examples to the meetings for discussion and comment.

The Society welcomes new members regardless of their level of experience, whether rank beginner or seasoned expert. Its focus is on sharing knowledge in a supportive and enjoyable way. Members receive advance notice of each event via mail and email, and attend all meetings without charge. Guests are welcomed; a donation of five dollars is requested for each invitee.

Meetings are held in various locations, including public meeting facilities, museums, rug dealers’ galleries, and other appropriate venues. Light refreshments accompany each gathering.

In addition to its meetings, NERS sponsors occasional workshops, gallery trips, museum visits and exhibitions of oriental rugs. In 1991/92, for example, the Society mounted a major exhibition in cooperation with the Rhode Island School of Design Museum of Art and, later, The Textile Museum in Washington DC. A hardbound color catalog co-authored by two NERS members and published in conjunction with the exhibition now enjoys a permanent place in the world literature on oriental rugs.

The Society was also a principal sponsor of the first American Conference on Oriental Rugs (ACOR 1) held in Boston in 1992, and its members have played major roles in organizing the seven biennial ACOR conferences that followed. In the spring of 2006 the Society hosted ACOR 8 in Boston, during which it mounted 10 separate exhibitions of rugs, trappings, and other textiles selected from its members’ collections.

Among the speakers featured at past meetings have been such internationally respected rug experts as noted author Jon Thompson of Cambridge, England, rug scholar Elena Tsareva, (former curator of the Russian Ethnographic Museum, St. Petersburg), Belkis Balpinar, (founding director of Istanbul’s Vakiflar Museum), Parviz Tanavoli, (Iranian tribal rug expert), noted German carpet collector Heinrich Kirchheim, Josephine Powell, (Istanbul-based doyenne of Anatolia’s ethnographic researchers), and HALI co-founder Robert Pinner.

We cordially invite you to join the New England Rug Society and share our common interest in this unique and exciting art form.

Steering Committee

Mark Hopkins (President)

  
Rosalie Rudnick (Emeritus)

Contact Info