ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the commodification of Oriental carpets in the context of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries through connoisseur discourses. The commodification of the luxury carpet also resulted in a distinction in terms of symbolic capital between the products of two kinds of labor: those produced for consumption in the public sphere by power looms in Europe and those that were imported mostly for domestic use. A focus on the visual education of the eye as part of the connoisseurs' culture was crucial in the spectacularization of Orientalia and commercial capitalism. The more one partakes in connoisseurs' knowledge, the better one can appreciate the carpet and estimate its value. The chapter elaborates both the subject figure produced in the connoisseur books as well as the subject/viewer who is constituted by these discursive practices is located within a scopic economy.
