2024 marks the 50th anniversary of the Cater family’s Rug Shop – the last 23 years of which have been spent enriching the main street of Bangalow. Georgia Fox spoke with proprietors Anne and Milton to learn more.
In 1974, with a handshake between strangers in the bazaar of the ancient Persian trading hub of Herat, Afghanistan, Bangalow’s Rug Shop was born. Maybe it’s because he joined the “last gasp” of the ancient continuum of merchants along the Silk Road, predating the formalities of lawyers and contracts, or simply because Milton Cater is a fortunate man, but 50 years, a second generation and a series of pivotal handshake agreements later, this traditional, good-faith approach to business continues to stand the entire operation in good stead.
It was Milton’s second time in Herat. He had purchased a Persian rug when passing through a couple of years earlier on his return to Australia via the hippie overland route – despite, according to Milton, not being a hippie and travelling with a suitcase. Coveted by friends and family back in his hometown on the Gold Coast, the rug was snapped up by his uncle, and the possibility emerged of turning his love of “all things Persian” into a career.
With a small loan from said uncle, Milton returned to Herat where he found a dealer named Mohammed Amin who shared his preference for the more interesting rugs of desert tribes over so-called master weavers. After a satisfactory I Ching reading from Mohammed Amin’s holy man and with nothing more than a list, a total, a small down payment and a pledge from Milton to return with the outstanding amount “in a year or three,” the peculiar age-old human ritual of extending and clasping weaponless hands was performed, formalising the agreement and heralding the beginning of an era.
Setting up shop in Brisbane’s Paddington, it was only 18 months before Milton was back in Herat for a third time, looking for Mohammed Amin to pay off his debt and secure more stock. But Mohammed Amin was no longer in the bazaar and his enquiries were met with “hushed undertones”. Milton finally found him working in the run-down old shoe market, stripped of his former life after being caught smuggling goods through the desert and avoiding tax collectors at the borders – how, it turns out, he was able to develop relationships with remote rugproducing tribes. His camel train and wealth seized, Mohammed Amin apologised that he was no longer able to be of assistance and introduced Milton to Qasim, who went on to become a dear friend and supplier for many years.
The communist coup in the late 1970s had already made things difficult for the merchant classes of Afghanistan, but as the country became increasingly war-torn, Qasim and his family disappeared. He later surfaced in Agra, India, destitute, appealing to his Australian friend for help. Milton sent the family thousands of dollars from the profits he had made selling both Mohammed Amin and Qasim’s rugs and heard nothing, until one day, about three years later when he received a call from his customs agent. A shipment had arrived from Qasim from his new home of Mashhad, Iran – a centre of carpet trade – containing inventory to the value of the funds Milton had sent. A full-circle moment of trust and faith, first set in motion by Mohammed Amin back in 1974.
Milton’s ties to our region stretch back to childhood, growing up visiting the family weekender at Suffolk, to which his parents moved permanently in 1972, and after closing the Paddington store in the early eighties, he moved to Bangalow and turned his attention to wholesaling. Anne had relocated from Sydney around the same time, and being eager to travel to India, was more than impressed with the nine trips Milton already had under his belt. The two married and had three sons – Nick, Alex and Max.
In 1999, an opportunity arose that suited the Caters’ perfectly – the owners of the old grocery store that formerly occupied The Rug Shop, Lisa and Peter Hughes, were waiting on the redevelopment of the garage across the road (present-day Foodworks), and the landlord, Cath Pugsley, needed tenants who could work with an undefined move-in date. With just another handshake, the deal was sealed. So firmly in fact, that despite the rapid gentrification of Bangalow during the two years it took for the new supermarket to be ready, and the multiple offers of more money Cath received for the space, she honoured the agreement, and Anne and Milton opened in November 2001 – tricky timing for merchants dealing in Islamic wares a matter of weeks after 9/11.
They found a way around their usual twice yearly purchasing trips to the Middle East during the pandemic by shifting negotiations to WhatsApp, and even with the borders reopened, the convenience has stuck. Trading remotely with sanctioned countries is not for the faint-hearted though, both financially and logistically, and seems is only possible thanks to the meaningful relationships forged with their network on the ground over so many years.
The boys gravitated towards the business, which is undergoing a gradual generational transition. As Anne and Milton ease their foot off the pedal and spend more time with their ever-growing number of grandchildren, Nick and Alex continue stepping to the front, with Max in the shop part-time when he’s not working as a local arborist. But it is not just their children carrying on the mantle – Anne and Milton often find themselves dealing with a second generation of suppliers, as well as a second generation of clients.
The longstanding excellent relationship with their landlord also underwent a recent transition with the purchase of the shop, cementing their presence on our main street. With their comprehensive online store offering free shipping Australia-wide though, their reach extends far beyond our little town, with a huge client base in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane.
To be a trader of integrity amongst a world of mass-produced imitations and dubiously eternal closing down sales put The Rug Shop in an elite category alongside just a handful of others across the country. They are the only recognised valuers north of Sydney, offer a full service of repairs and cleaning, and deal in both antique pieces, as well as traditionally produced contemporary rugs, directly supporting families of sheep farmers and weavers.
Paying forward the good faith extended to them back in Herat half a century ago, the Caters welcome customers taking rugs home to try in situ before purchasing, and in all their years of entrusting strangers with such precious works of art, have, with only one exception, had their faith in the essential good of humans sustained.
On the subject of whether rugs are art or not, Milton is passionate. “We have this hierarchy – there’s fine art and there’s domestic art, and it’s so wrong. Everything here,” he says gesturing at the walls of exquisite colour and patterns that take months, and sometimes years to produce, “in the Western canon, is not considered art. We consider it art.”