R.R. McCampbell ’51

Nipper was born Oct. 25, 1929, in Binghamton, N.Y., to Richard and Sarah English McCampbell.

Nipper prepared at the Breck School in Minneapolis, Minn. At Princeton he was active in the Glee Club and St. Paul’s Society, belonged to Cap and Gown, and played 150-pound football and lacrosse.

After two years in the Navy he worked for the Valley National Bank in Phoenix. By 1965 he had moved to the Marquette National Bank in Minneapolis, where he was director of marketing.

Toward the end of his banking career, Nipper became seriously interested in rugs. By around 1990 he was fully occupied in trading rugs woven in the Caucasus regions of Azerbaijan, Dagestan, and Armenia that were generally 80 to 100 years old. He didn’t buy knotted carpets, but rather soumaks, a woven kilim with embroidery covering 100 percent of its surface. In one trip he examined more than 1,000 rugs before picking the 21 that he purchased. He used to go to Turkey three or four times a year, sometimes spending the winter there.

Nipper died Oct. 1, 2015, at home in Tofte, Minn., and is survived by his wife, Perihan; children Sarah, Duncan, and Duff “Stuart”; and two grandchildren.