a magic carpet ride Reflections on The Persian Carpet’s journey as its owners close the showroom and pivot their business
T
he Persian Carpet is closing its doors to the public after
nearly 50 years. This iconic landmark, with a camel in each bay window, straddles the Durham-Orange county line, standing sentinel over travelers on the corner of I-40 and Hwy. 15-501. What started as a small dream for owners Doug Lay and Nelda Lay grew into a diverse and thriving business renowned locally and internationally for its dedication to the art of fine rug weaving. Doug, “a country boy” from Mississippi, and Nelda, “a Southern belle” from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, met at Louisiana State University in 1958 when he passed through a class registration line where she was working. Doug was instantly smitten and got right back in line, patiently waiting for a chance to ask her out. Nelda’s datebook was already full for every football game that semester, but she found an opening for him. On one of their first dates together, she agreed to ride through a bayou in a flat-bottomed boat, clutching a burlap sack that she was instructed to open each time Doug grabbed a bullfrog from the banks with his bare hands and thrust it in the bag – a decidedly more interesting outing than a football game. Doug and Nelda married in 1961. They moved to Chicago, where he pursued a doctorate in anatomy at the University of Chicago. In 1962, Doug was selected by the Field Museum to participate in a mammal collecting expedition to Iran, which proved to be a pivitol moment in the trajectory of their lives. Over the next 20 years, Doug made 18 trips to Iran to further his zoological research. In the process, he visited every region of the country, learned about rug-weaving traditions and began to collect rugs himself. Friends soon offered to pay him to bring rugs back for them. Nelda started joining him on these trips, and after the couple moved to Chapel Hill in 1973 when Doug accepted 64
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october/november 2023
a professorship at UNC, they decided to import a few more rugs, rent a corner at the Country Squire Antiques Center and see where things went. They opened in October 1976 with a stack of 15 rugs imported from Iran; Nelda says she sold one rug during the first month and so was able to pay next month’s rent. From there, they expanded into the large back room, then