Arabesque Gold Award winning design for 2011

Arabesque Gold is hand made by Tibetan refugees in Kathmandu, Nepal and is unique in using traditional centuries-old techniques.  This is a 100 knot rug made with Tibetan wool and comes with silk accents.

Safavieh - Old World (GOLD / GREEN)

While the term “Oriental Rugs” is used rather loosely, technically, oriental rugs are hand-knotted or hand-woven rugs produced in the Near East (such as Turkey), Middle East (such as Pakistan and Iran), or Far East (such as India, China and Tibet) with traditional designs.  Rugs or carpets made by machine, by hand-tufting, or by any method other than hand-knotting or hand-weaving are not true oriental rugs.

Oriental rugs are often organized by origin.  The terms Persian rugs, Chinese rugs, Tibetan rugs, and Kurdish rugs are all specifications that fall under a broad classification of oriental rugs.

Although historians have not been able to pinpoint exactly when the first oriental rugs were made, hand-knotted rugs have probably been around since human civilization began.  Man first began using animal furs as clothing and flooring, but as animals became domesticated and farming increased, the use of sheared wool and silk became mediums for weaving.

Oriental carpet weaving as an art form has been traced back to at least the 5^th century BC.  The oldest known oriental rug was discovered in a Chieftain burial chamber in Siberia, near the outer Mongolian border.  The 2,500-year-old hand knotted rug was in remarkably good condition with a symmetrical knot motif – still used in rugs today.  You can see the rug in the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia.

The first oriental rugs were not just used to cover the floor – they would have also been used to cover seating, as wall hangings, and as ceilings in nomadic tents.   Throughout history, Oriental rugs have traveled the ancient Silk Road as the materials and their designs migrated around the ancient world.  The Romans were known to have adorned their homes with oriental rugs and often used them to pay their taxes, Marco Polo wrote about the oriental rugs he discovered in his journeys through Turkey and China in the 13^th century, and oriental rugs are described in Solomon’s palace in the Old Testament.

Today, while there a great number of factories producing low quality cheap rugs to capitalize on our fascination with oriental rugs, there are also traditions of carpet weaving that still endure, with wool still being spun by local people from local sheep and some dyes still being made from plants.  Long may it be so!

Please let me know your thoughts in the comment section above

Gingko Border Wheat

While the term “Arts and Crafts” can be used for a broad variety of topics, we are using it to describe the decorative design and style that began as a movement in England during the late Victorian period.  At that time, the industrial revolution led to mass-market products produced by machine with man-made materials.  Unhappiness with this trend led to an increased value placed on handcraftsmanship, truth to natural materials, and simple folk styles of decoration.

This movement migrated from England to the rest of Europe, and across the pond to the United States.  In the US, this style was take up by American designers – most notably Gustav Stickley – and further developed to reflect natural materials and rectilinear designs (also known as the Mission style).  While the English movement continued to stress individual hand-crafted exquisite pieces that could be afforded only by the very wealthy, in the US, the movement migrated to aesthetic mass-produced pieces targeted to the middle-class. 

 No discussion about Arts and Crafts movement can be complete without a mention of Frank Lloyd Wright.  Wright took the Arts and Crafts movement to a new level and ushered in a style of architecture characterized by “organic” architecture that reflected the nature around it. 

Arts and Crafts designs continue to be popular to current times.  The marriage of Arts and Crafts designs with hand-knotted rugs is a natural fit.  Rugs made with organic cotton, natural wool, and silk – produced 100% by hand – truly reflect the values of the original Arts and Crafts ideals.  Today, there are several weaving centers in Tibet dedicated to keeping alive the Arts and Crafts design tradition!

Please let me know your thoughts in the comment section above

Looms vary quite a bit in size and sophistication, but the essential components are always the same. The most basic loom contains a frame which holds the warp strings and a heddle – or shedding device that allows the weaver to pass wefts through the warp strings.

Vertical Loom

There are 2 primary types of looms – horizontal and vertical.

Horizontal looms are the simplest form of loom and are staked to the ground. The weaver ties the knots from a sitting position, looking down onto the rug. These looms are primarily used by nomadic people since they can be disassembled and transported easily – however these looms can only produce small rugs of lesser quality.

Vertical looms like the one pictured above are much more comfortable for the weaver as they can sit in front and work at eye level. These are the most common looms used in weaving centers around the world, although there are countless variations! There is essentially no restriction on the size of the rug that can be produced on a vertical loom – rollers can be used on the top or bottom to produce any length, and the width just depends on how large you want to make your loom.

In addition to the loom, a weaver also needs a number of essential tools – a knife for cutting the yarn as the knots are tied, a comb for packing down the wefts and each row of knots to tighten the weave, and shears for trimming the pile once several rows are complete.

Loom Tools

And that’s a quick review of rug loom basics!

See Foundation part 1 of 5
See Knots part 2 of 5
See Dyes part 3 fo 5
See Wool part 4 of 5

Please let me know your thoughts in the comment section above

Oceania - Modern Nature Design

Modern Nature Designs makes beautiful hand knotted wool and silk rugs. 

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 Sheep Shearing, Wool Sorting and Washing

Shearing Wool

 We won’t spend a lot of time talking about the first 3 steps since they are pretty much the same whether you are gathering wool for making rugs, or the thousands of other uses wool has in our society!  Basically, the sheep gets a “haircut”, the wool is sorted based on quality, and then all the dirt (and stones and sticks) is washed out of the wool.  Washing the wool is a pretty important step because you have to be careful to wash some of the natural oils (lanolin) out, but not too much.  If you leave too much oil in the wool, the wool will repel the dye, but you can’t take too much oil out because you need enough lanolin to make the wool easy to handle and to produce a higher quality thread.

 Carding the Wool

Carding Wool

 Carding is the process of combing the wool to align the fibers.  For the highest quality wool, this is done by hand between 2 combs.  To keep labor expenses down, this process is often done by machine – but be aware that this produces an inferior product because a machine pulls the fibers more strongly, weakening the fibers.

 Spinning the Wool into Yarn

Spinning Wool

Now here’s where the real skill comes into play!  While the majority of wool is spun by machine (more on that below), we will focus on the process of hand spinning.  There are two basic types of spindles; the top (or high) whorl spindle which originated in the Middle East, and the bottom (or low) whorl spindle which is used in Europe and the US. 

Both types of spindles require a very experienced and skilled spinner to pull a few wool fibers and twist them into yarn – constantly batching in more fibers as the yarn is created.

 Machine-Spun vs. Hand-Spun Yarn

 The primary difference between machine-spun vs. hand-spun yarn is that machine-spun yarn is much more uniform in thickness.  While on the surface this sounds good, in fact, the inherent variability of hand-spun wool creates a much more valuable product.  There are several reasons for this:

• Hand-spinning produces a looser yarn that exposes more of the surface to the dye and creates a better knot.
• Because of the variability of hand-spun wool, when is dyed it absorbs more dye where it is looser and less dye where it is tighter.  This creates more variegation in the colors, resulting in more depth of color and the prized “abrash” effect in the finished product.
• Hand-spinning is less abrasive to the wool than machine spinning and produces a more resilient and stronger yarn that lasts longer and wears better.
• Rugs created with hand-spun wool have a distinct pile direction which creates different colors depending on the light.  This effect is not nearly as distinguishable in rugs made of machine-spun yarns.

 We’d better stop there – that’s a short blog on a very long and laborious process!

See Foundation part 1 of 5
See Knots part 2 of 5
See Dyes part 3 of 5

Please let me know your thoughts in the comment section above.

Desert Sunset – new design for 2010

Tibet Rug Company announces a new rug design for 2010 – Desert Sunset (80 knot count).   ]]> http://1000sofrugs.com/Oriental-Rugs/2010/04/tibet-rug-company-desert-sunset/feed/ 0 http://1000sofrugs.com/Oriental-Rugs/2010/04/hand-knotted-rugs-dyes/ http://1000sofrugs.com/Oriental-Rugs/2010/04/hand-knotted-rugs-dyes/#comments Mon, 05 Apr 2010 12:33:21 +0000 admin http://1000sofrugs.com/Oriental-Rugs/?p=215 In the previous blogs in this series on Hand Knotted Rug Construction, we reviewed the foundation and the knots.  Today’s topic is the dyes used to produce such intricate and beautiful patterns in hand knotted rugs.

There are many rug experts who are trained to be able to differentiate types of dyes – both with their “expert eye”, and through chemical analysis.  This article is not intended to turn you into an expert, but to just share some basic information about dyes.

First, there are 2 primary types of dyes. 

• Natural – also called vegetable or vegetal
• Synthetic – also referred to as aniline or chrome

There is a widespread belief that natural dyes are always superior to synthetic dyes.  While it’s true that a quality antique hand knotted rug made with natural dyes is generally more valuable than one made with synthetic dyes, there are many more factors to take into account when valuing hand knotted rugs.  For most people, the key questions you need to take into account when purchasing a rug is:  are the colors pleasing to your eye and harmonious, or are they harsh and artificial?  Will the colors develop more character and depth as they age, or will they fade or run noticeably?

Natural Dyes

As you would expect, natural dyes were the dyes used in the first rugs thousands of years ago, and continue to be widely used today.  These dyes are all produced from nature – some colors from different plant material and some colors from insects!  In historical times (and in nomadic tribes today), each group used its local indigenous materials in dyeing their yarns, so it was often possible to tell a rug’s origin by both the tribal pattern, and the predominant color palette. 

To prepare natural dyes, you must gather the natural materials (plant or insect), dry it, grind it, and seep it.  The yarn is prepared by first dipping it in a hot mix of alum or iron which prepares the wool to bond with the dye, and then the wool is cooked in vats of hot dye.  The temperature, time, and number of different cooking periods depend on the color and shade desired.  This is a very manual and time intensive process, and is why natural dyes are more costly than synthetic dyes.

Despite the higher cost, there is a reason rugs made with natural dyes are generally more valuable – it is actually hard to make natural colors look bad!  With a skilled dyer, this process produces gorgeous colors with a lot of depth and character.   Because you often have to use several different primary colors to produce the color you want (yellow and blue to make green for example), the resulting yarn will have a variegated color that shows specs of all of the colors used.  In addition, natural dyes tend to be made in smaller vats leading to several different batches of yarn color that are not identical.  Over time, these variations tend to show up more – one of the reasons antique rugs generally increase in value! 

Natural dyes stable over time.  You will find rugs in museum collections with vibrant rugs that are several hundred years old. 

Synthetic Dyes

Synthetic dyes have a troubled history.  The first synthetic dyes were aniline dyes introduced in the 1860s.  These were horrible dyes that were extremely cheap and so were widely used to increase the production of rugs for export.  These dyes bled, faded, and were very harsh to the eye.   This ruined the reputation of hand knotted rugs, and aniline dyes were eventually banned in Persia (modern day Iran).  Tradition has it that if anyone was found using aniline dyes the penalty was to cut off their right hand!  These dyes are not used in quality rugs today – although some people still refer to all synthetic dyes as “aniline”.

Modern synthetic dyes are made of potassium bichromate (generally just called “chrome”) and thankfully for the tradition of hand knotted rugs, they are very good.  They are easy to use, and produce a huge range of consistent colors that age extremely well.  It is generally impossible for the non-expert to tell the difference between natural dyes and chrome dyes.  The primary difference is that over time, the rug with natural dyes will develop more variegated color, while the rug with chrome dyes will maintain its more uniform color.  This is an issue for those in the antique business, but generally not an issue for those who are using the rug in their home.

Well, that’s a very brief summary on the dyes!  Next time we will cover another aspect of the construction of hand knotted rugs!

See Foundation part 1 of 5
See Knots part 2 of 5
See Wool part 4 of 5

Please let me know your thoughts in the comment section above.

Chinese Rug ( Peonies & Butterflies)

The long and fascinating history hand knotted rugs has its roots in five countries; China, Egypt, India and Persia (now Iran).  Known collectively as Oriental rugs, their interest and value has continued for several centuries.

 China has a long tradition of weaving rugs – the first Chinese rugs originated in the north-west of the country in the area around Xinjiang.  About the time of the Western Han Dynasty (206 BC – 24 AD) the technique of rug making spread along the Silk Route extending from Qinghai, Gansu, Nigxia, Shenmu and Yulin to Inner Mongolia and Shanxi. Rug weaving later extended into other locations such as Peking (now Beijing), Tianjing, Hebei and Shandong, where their own distinctive styles evolved.

 However, the art of knotting rugs as we traditionally think of Oriental rugs was not introduced until around the 15th and 17th century – but once this technique was introduced, it became the new standard.

 Traditional Chinese hand knotted rugs were normally made from wool but northern nomads would also use goat and camel hair.  Early on, Chinese weavers found that silk had special qualities that gave nuances of color as the light source changed.

The patterns in classic Chinese rugs are often taken from the patterns of the porcelain painters and from silks, and the designs typically followed other established art forms.  These are typically Buddhist and Taoist symbols including the lotus flower, clouds, dragons, phoenix, elephants, horses, and bats.  (The bat shares its name with the Chinese word for luck and is a popular symbol of good fortune.)  These designs are largely symbolic rather than purely decorative and the traditional colors include black, blue, red, white, beige and yellow.

 In the 1980’s the Oriental market was in a state of decline in China as well as the rest of the world as aniline dyes, machine-spun wool, and poor quality dominated the market.  At that time, a group of men sparked a “renaissance” in the modern rug market by returning to the traditional labor intensive method of rug making using vegetable or high quality chrome dyes and superior hand spun wools and silks. 

 China was involved with this renaissance and several weaving centers were opened up in China dedicated to producing high quality hand knotted rugs.  The patterns on these rugs can vary with the weavers producing both traditional classic Chinese patterns in traditional colors, and also branching out in to new designs suited to modern tastes.

Please let me know your thoughts in the comment section above.

Knot Type

There are several different methods of creating knots, some particular to a region or tribe.  Different people have different preferences, we would not say that one particular knot is inherently “better” than another type of knot; it’s really a matter of preference and tradition!  The two predominant types of knots are Asymmetrical Knot and Symmetrical Knot.

Asymmetrical Knot

Asymmetrical Knot:  Also known as the Persian Knot or Senneh Knot.  This knot is used in Iran, India, Turkey, Pakistan Egypt and China. To form this knot, yarn is wrapped around one warp strand and then one end is passed under the neighboring warp strand and brought back to the surface. The asymmetrical knot may open on the left or the right.

Symmetrical Knot

Jufti Knot

 Jufti Knot:  The Jufti Knot is used in Khorasan, Iran. This knot can be either symmetrical or symmetrical and is distinguished by the doubling of the warp strands.

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Tibetan Knot

Tibetan Knot:  The Tibetan knot is used in Tibet, and in the Tibetan weaving centers located in India and Pakistan. This knot is generated by a distinctive rug-weaving technique in which a temporary rod is put in front of the warp. A continuous yarn is looped around two warps and then once around the rod. When a row of loops is finished, then the loops are cut to construct the knots.

Materials

Wool:  Wool continues to be the most frequently used knot material in hand knotted rugs.  It is hard to beat its luster, softness, durability, and cost effectiveness.  One interesting note, one good quality room size rug can use an entire flock of sheep worth of wool!

Silk:  Silk has always been a luxurious option for those able to afford it!  Silk is both beautiful and strong and can be used alone, or as a highlight for wool.  Silk originated in China and travelled the silk road for many centuries for use in rugs in the Middle and Far East.  China continues to be the origin of most of the best quality silk available today, although it is now cultivated in many other countries including Iran, Turkey, and India.

Cotton:  Cotton is primarily used in the foundation of hand knotted rugs as discussed in the previous article.  However some weaving groups such as the Turkomans also use cotton for small white details in their rugs.

Knot Count

A rug can be made from 25 knots per square inch (kpi) to over 1,000 kpi.  Anything over a 300 kpi is pretty rare, and is most likely made of silk.  Most good quality wool rugs run between 75 and 150 kpi.  At 100 kpi, a typical 9’ x 12’ rug contains over 1.5 million knots!  This means one skilled weaver – even at a rate of several thousand knots per day – would take 2-3 years to complete his rug – luckily for those waiting for their rug; the larger rugs are generally woven by several weavers at a time, cutting the time to a few months.   

I hope you enjoyed this quick summary about knots – there’s plenty more to write about including patterns, designs, and such, but we’ll save that for another day!

See Foundation part 1 of 5
See Dyes part 3 of 5
See Wool part 4 of 5

Please let me know your thoughts in the comment section above.