Robert Mosby Antique Rug dealer Archives

11 June 2025 by Ivan Soenderholm

Home » People in the rug world » Robert Mosby: Passion for Art Deco Chinese Rugs

This article is part of Jozan Magazine’s ongoing series of personal portraits from the oriental rug world, highlighting the experiences and perspectives of dealers, researchers, and experts.

Robert Mosby is the founder of Antique Oriental Rugs, based in Florida, and has been active in the trade for over five decades. From a chance discovery in an Ohio antique shop to becoming one of the first rug dealers on eBay, Mosby’s story is a mix of intuition, mentorship, and market foresight. His passion for collecting has shaped one of the world’s largest inventories of antique Art Deco Chinese rugs.

My life in the rug business started in 1970 in Cincinnati, Ohio. I was browsing an antique store and bought two rugs for $150—not knowing what they were. A few weeks later, I passed a respected antique rug shop downtown. I walked in, showed them my rugs, and the owner offered me $1,600 on the spot.

That man was Richard Markarian, one of the most famous antique rug dealers in the U.S.—maybe in the world. I accepted the offer, and that moment changed my life. I eventually went to work for him, and on my third day, I sold two rugs to a college professor for $20,000. Markarian called me into his office and told me I’d just made the store’s biggest sale that month.

I spent five years under his mentorship. He taught me everything—identification, construction, repair, and the history behind every rug. When I eventually left to start my own business, he helped fund it. I owe him everything: my first sale, my love of collecting, and a career that’s now lasted 55 years.

In 1997, a friend told me he’d sold a rug I wanted for $8,000—on something called eBay. I had never heard of it. My wife Holly and I didn’t know the first thing about websites or even computers, but she learned quickly. We became one of the first antique rug dealers on eBay.

E-commerce changed everything. Suddenly, the world was our marketplace. I could buy more, hold more, and—most importantly—collect more.

I became especially drawn to antique Caucasian, Turkish, and Chinese rugs. I carved out a niche in Art Deco and Peking rugs, which weren’t very popular at the time. While 9×12 Decos were selling for $500, I was quietly building a massive inventory. One dealer in Macau gave me the idea that I could build a strong domestic market. It worked.

Today, I have one of the world’s largest collections of antique Art Deco Chinese rugs. https://antiqueorientalrugs.com/product-category/chinese-rugs/art-deco-chinese-rugs/

Our business grew. Holly and I traveled the world—through Oriental bazaars and back-room deals—always on the hunt. At some point, Holly told me, “You’re buying more than you’re selling.”

By 2020, our inventory had grown to over 1,100 rugs.

What can I say? I love rugs. I’ve loved them since the first one I ever saw. Of course, I’ve broken the golden rule Mr. Markarian taught me: Don’t fall in love with the inventory!

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Interview conducted by Ivan Sønderholm for Jozan Magazine. Edited with permission from Robert Mosby.

Robert and Holly Mosby view the Pazyryk Carpet in St Peterburg Russia

The Pazyryk (Russian: Пазырык) burials are a number of Scythian Iron Age tombs found in the Pazyryk Valley of the Ukok plateau in the Altai Mountains, Siberia, south of the modern city of Novosibirsk, Russia; the site is close to the borders with China, Kazakhstan and Mongolia. Numerous comparable burials have been found in neighboring western Mongolia.

The tombs are Scythian-type kurgans, barrow-like tomb mounds containing wooden chambers covered over by large cairns of boulders and stones, dated to the 4th - 3rd centuries BCE.^[5] The spectacular burials at Pazyryk are responsible for the introduction of the term kurgan, a Russian word of Turkic origin, into general usage to describe these tombs. The region of the Pazyryk kurgans is considered the type site of the wider Pazyryk culture. The site is included in the Golden Mountains of Altai UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The bearers of the Pazyryk culture were horse-riding pastoral nomads of the steppe, and some may have accumulated great wealth through horse trading with merchants in Persia, India and China. This wealth is evident in the wide array of finds from the Pazyryk tombs, which include many rare examples of organic objects such as felt hangings, Chinese silk, the earliest known pile carpet, horses decked out in elaborate trappings, and wooden furniture and other household goods. These finds were preserved when water seeped into the tombs in antiquity and froze, encasing the burial goods in ice, which remained frozen in the permafrost until the time of their excavation.

Because of a freak climatic freeze, some of the Altaic burials, notably those of the 5th century BCE at Pazyryk and neighbouring sites, such as Katanda, Shibe, and Tuekt, were isolated from external climatic variations by a protective layer of ice that conserved the organic substances buried in them. Certain geometric designs and sun symbols, such as the circle and rosette, recur at Pazyryk but are completely outnumbered by animal motifs. Such specifically Scythian features as zoomorphic junctures—i.e., the addition of a part of one animal to the body of another—are rarer in the Altaic region than in southern Russia. The stag and its relatives, however, figure as prominently in Altaic as in Scythian art.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

See this Pazyrk style border on a Laver Kerman we have in stock! : persian-laver-kerman-antique-rug

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Robert Mosby: A Passion for Art Deco Chinese Rugs

Buried in the permafrost, the worlds oldest rug. The Pazyryk Carpet.

Horseman, Pazyryk felt artifacts.