So Bob Ehrlich has a rug after all.
The $37,500 custom carpet he ordered as governor in early 2006 was just installed in the State House, setting off a new round of woolly-headed speculation:
Does the mustachioed fisherman on the right look a little Indian?
Not Native American. Indian as in from India, the Asian subcontinent where the thing was made.
At the center of the handmade Indo Sarouk-style rug is a replica of the Maryland state seal, which includes images of a farmer and a fisherman. On the official seal, the fisherman sports a straight, furry 'stache. On the rug, it's a slim, subcontinental chevron. (The farmer wears a full beard on both.)
"It's not unheard of in decorative arts to have some facial features that relate to the craftsman," said Elaine Rice Bachmann, director of artistic property at the State Archives.
She hadn't noticed the allegedly Indian features that had some in the State House chuckling, but she'd seen something similar on historic ceramics that were made in China and portray signers of the Declaration of Independence.
"All of the people [signing] have little Chinese faces," she said.
The state ordered the handmade rug through Towson's Alex Cooper, The Baltimore Sun's Gadi Dechter reported this week.
No one at Alex Cooper called me back to talk about the carpet, so I'm left to speculate that the rug-maker, maybe someone about Drew Ehrlich's age, modeled the 'stache after his dad's.
Or perhaps the design was a nod to diversity. Ehrlich cast himself as a big-tent guy. And you know what they say: big tent, big rug.
Now it gets dull
Is it possible that something that starts with mayor-developer sex and designer spending sprees can peter out to a sterile, no-name sellout?
In the state prosecutor's long-running City Hall corruption investigation, sex, fur and Jimmy Choo have given way to a political survey.
Baltimoreans are denied, even, the brand.
"Company Z" is how court documents identify the firm that supposedly conducted a $12,500 survey for Councilwoman Helen Holton and, according to her indictment, sent the bill to developer Ron Lipscomb.
In exchange, prosecutors say, Holton helped Lipscomb secure city tax breaks worth millions.
Mayor Sheila Dixon helped Lipscomb, too. And the alleged quid pro quo with Dixon was far juicier, according to prosecutors who raided her Hunting Ridge home last summer. Dixon accepted fur coats, air travel and other gifts, and even dashed off to New York with Lipscomb hours after voting on one of his deals, the prosecutors say in court documents.
