GUEST: Well, this rug actually belonged to my husband's grandmother. She lived in Dayton, Ohio. And she was from a very affluent family. When she passed away in 2003, her children divided up the antiques and belongings from her estate, and we actually received a few of the items that no one else was interested in holding on to. This is one of the rugs that we received.

APPRAISER: And have you been using it?

GUEST: When we first got it, we put it out, but we had young children at the time, and it feels very delicate to me, and there are some condition issues, so I actually folded it up and I put it under my bed. And last night, before I came to the ANTIQUES ROADSHOW, I remembered that I had stored it there, and here it is today.

APPRAISER: How long was it stored under your care?

GUEST: Probably about seven years.

APPRAISER: Well, you're really, first of all, really lucky that moths didn't get into it.

GUEST: Oh.

APPRAISER: That's a common problem, especially in Florida with the climate. It's a Persian rug, it's called a Tabriz.

GUEST: Okay. And it was woven around 1910, so it's actually kind of fun, because it's not far off from what the vintage of this house is. It's about ten years older than the house, and probably very similar to what types of rugs would have been in the house. Tabriz rugs were made for the Western market in great abundance in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

GUEST: Okay.

APPRAISER: And so it has the classic design format of the medallion center. So you'll notice that they started the rug, and they had a fair amount of dark blue. And you can see the blue is extending out to the edge because they're weaving on a horizontal plane. When they run out of the blue they go to this sort of brownish color, and you'll notice that the color and the border also changes. So they essentially ran out of the blue all the way up to here, where they must have gotten another batch of deep indigo.

GUEST: Now, what country would this have been produced in?

APPRAISER: Iran.

GUEST: Okay.

APPRAISER: But they're, classically they're known as Persian rugs.

GUEST: Mm-hmm.

APPRAISER: Because before 1935, the country was called Persia. All the weavers were women, and a rug of this size would have been made by one or two women. Where if it's a rug that's ten or 15 feet wide, it could have been five to seven women. Tabriz rugs are typically very finely woven, they have a high knot density, and a result is that you have very good detail. And some of the design elements are really nice classical design elements. This orange color helps us date the rug.

GUEST: Oh.

APPRAISER: Because this dye was introduced in the 1880s. It's an aniline dye, and it's one of the first synthetic dyes that was introduced. So before the 1880s, they were using mostly natural dyes. And the synthetic dyes were so expensive in the beginning that they used them very sparingly. So you'll note that there, have just used little touches of the orange everywhere. One of the hallmarks of the synthetic dyes, however, is that they don't fade at all. So that while the other colors may have mellowed, the orange remains as bright as it every was.

GUEST: Yeah.

APPRAISER: Even though they were very finely woven and they were workshop pieces, there's an element to them that really signifies that they're handmade. If you look at this medallion, you'll notice that from here to here is a lot shorter distance than from here to here.

GUEST: Oh, I never noticed that.

APPRAISER: And so the weavers figured out that they had done the design in such a way that they got to the middle of the medallion before they actually got to the middle of the rug. And so they had to improvise, how can we make the design longer so that it's still in balance? And so you have this kind of disproportionate medallion here, which is really kind of fun. The selvedges on the side have been replaced.

GUEST: Okay.

APPRAISER: So at some point in the rug's life, the sides were distressed, had a little bit of uneven wear, and the old way of dealing with it, as opposed to restoring the sides, was to just cut the edges evenly and then sew on an applied selvedge.

GUEST: Oh, okay.

APPRAISER: So that's not original, but other than that, the condition of the rug is very good. Any idea, ballpark, of what you think it might be worth?

GUEST: I would hope, with the age of it, maybe it would be worth $1,000?

APPRAISER: I actually think that if you were to go out and buy this rug in a retail establishment, it would cost you around $7,000.

GUEST: Oh, my gosh.

APPRAISER: In this market. These Tabriz rugs really range anywhere from $5,000 to $15,000, depending on what attributes they have.

GUEST: Oh, my gosh, I'm so excited. My daughter today told me she didn't think I should bring it, because it was one of the ugliest things she's ever seen.