- A carpet (from the Romansh, such as folk Latin tapetum/tapeta and Old Greek τάπης tápēs, related to Persian täftan, 'to spin' [1]) is a textile fabric of limited dimensions that can be knotted, woven, warp-knitted or tufted and is usually patterned. While in Europe today, carpets are understood almost exclusively as textile floor coverings. In the Middle East (Orient), the term still refers to all types of flat textiles used to cover walls (the latest wallpaper), tables, and floors. But also in parts of Baden-Württemberg and the south of Rhineland-Palatinate, ceilings, e.g., B. wool or bed covers, called carpet.[2] Depending on the format, a distinction is made between rugs, bridges, and runners, and in the 20th century, carpets and carpet tiles were also created.[3] Art and cultural sciences distinguish oriental carpets from carpets of European production.
The production of flatweaves, and thus also carpets, can be traced back to the beginnings of human culture. Braided objects, mostly made of willow, can be traced back to prehistoric times, man. Braiding processes were used to connect movable material. Therefore, braiding is seen as a precursor to weaving and has always been part of everyday nomadic and rural life; the flat fabrics produced in this way were used exclusively. For example, the original use of a hatch was as an entrance door to the yurt. Knotted carpets can also be found in nomadic cultures, for example, the Meschgin. The oldest known evidence of a knotted rug is the Pasyryk carpet from a tomb preserved in permafrost in the Pasyryk Valley in the Altai Mountains (South Siberia), on the border with Outer Mongolia. It is assumed that he was around 500 BC. probably originated in Western Asia.[4] You can already see all the characteristics of the oriental carpet on it. Around 330 BC BC Alexander the Great brought oriental carpets from his Asian campaigns to the Occident. Because rugs are made from ephemeral materials, there are not many historical artifacts that can be used to trace the evolution of the patterns. Because there are only a few surviving carpets from the early 15th and 16th centuries, carpet history heavily depends on pictorial traditions. An essential source of information for this is architecture. The rugs inspired the architects of the Orient for the mosaic patterns on their buildings. They thus preserved the customs for posterity in a much more permanent form, for example, in the ornamentation of facade mosaics. The origins and changes in the art of knotting and contemporary taste can also be studied in many paintings from that time. Due to a great love of detail when capturing everyday scenes or when commissioned to paint well-known aristocratic courts. It is, therefore, possible for us today to document the development of Turkish (Ottoman) carpet weaving. The painters Domenico Ghirlandaio, Hans Holbein and Lorenzo Lotto deserve special mention here. We have them to thank for the traditions of the so-called "Ghirlandaio carpets," the "Holbein carpets," and the "Lotto carpets." Above all, the "Holbein carpets" patterns can still be found in today's knots of the so-called Afghans.
In the carpet trade, the term 'provenance' has become established to describe the origin of a carpet. The place or landscape name of the oriental rug is the designation of origin or provenance, which is also a quality designation since the individual places and areas have their tradition in terms of design and quality. Oriental carpets are made in India, Iran, and Turkey. But they also come from the Caucasus, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. Furthermore, carpets come today from China, Nepal, Mongolia, and Japan; the so-called Berber carpets of the Maghreb countries should also be mentioned. Oriental rugs were also made in various European countries in the 19th century, e.g., B. in Deventer/Netherlands; today, they are still made in Croatia and Romania. Oriental carpets are characterized by their manual production and their pattern, which is based on the principle of surface decoration. In the depiction, a distinction is made between floral, figural, and geometric patterns. In addition, there are the small (approx. 50 × 80 cm) prayer rugs, which are made in almost all parts of the Islamic world and are permanently straightened.
Oriental carpets are either knitted or knotted.
The oriental tapestry, also known as tapestry, is historically and technically the forerunner of European tapestry. In terms of its importance, it serves as a wall covering, and only the more common types do, e.g., B. as divan corners, so-called kilims. Knitted carpets are often misleadingly called "tapestry-like carpets" because they are made using a technique similar to tapestry. Its correct name is knitted carpet. They form a smooth fabric whose warp of linen or cotton yarn is entirely covered by a densely beaten-in woolen weft, resulting in a rep-like material. However, the weft is not inserted into the warp threads over the entire width of the fabric but only connected to the warp up to the edge of the adjacent colored area and then fed back. Because they only have warp and weft, the threads lie flat and cannot form a pile. Examples are kilims and sumac rugs.
The knotted, plush-like carpets are made on a warp of cotton (manufactures), linen (very rare), wool (Anatolian carpets), or goat and other hair (nomadic rugs) by tying in pile stitches, the knot by knot across the entire width of the carpet to be knotted. One or two weft threads follow each row of knots. The knots can be symmetrical (Turkish knot[5]) or asymmetrical (Senneh or Persian knot[6]). After the carpet is finished, its pile is leveled with simple hand scissors. The pile material is sheep's wool, silk for more delicate rugs. The most beautiful and finest oriental carpets are still made in Persia, e.g., B. Isfahan, Ghom, or Nain, have been knotted. They correspond to European and American tastes with a knot count of over 1,000,000 knots per square meter, e.g., Partly twisted on a silk warp. The Turkish Hereke, newer pieces by Ipek and Özipek, pure silk carpets with over 1,000,000 knots per square meter, are also in demand. The Indian rugs have a higher pile and 300-350 stitches per meter. Copies (replicating) of high-quality, sought-after provenance often come from India and Pakistan today. A Gabbeh made in India (Indogabbeh) is more than 50% cheaper than the original Gabbeh from Iran. This is mainly due to the meager wages of the weavers in the Far East. In Pakistan, carpets are reknotted today that are no longer produced as originals. Because production came to a standstill in parts of southern Russia (Kazakhstan) after discovering oil because the people there had found far better sources of income. Today, Kasak and Karachi carpets are usually only seen as reworked carpets from Pakistan.
The oriental carpets - namely the knotted Smyrna carpets - were imitated with success in Europe, especially in Germany (Schmiedeberg since 1856, Cottbus, Wurzen, Springe, Linden, etc.) and in Vienna, using the same method. However, one works with a warp of linen yarn and a primary weft of jute, achieves excellent technical perfection, and knows how to reproduce the patterns and colors so faithfully that there is no longer a big difference between natural and imitation Smyrna carpets.
Die Wolle für den Flor wurde vor der Erfindung synthetischer Farbstoffe (nach 1850) ausschließlich mit pflanzlichen oder tierischen Farbstoffen gefärbt. Für Rot kamen Rotholz, Krapplack und Cochenille auf Alaun-gebeizter Wolle zur Anwendung. Für Gelbtöne gab es eine große Zahl von Färberpflanzen. Zur Blaufärbung (grün auf gelb gefärbter Wolle) stand seit dem Altertum Indigo zur Verfügung (heute synthetisches Indigo). Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts fanden synthetische Farbstoffe, erst äußerst sparsam, später als Ersatz für die traditionellen Farbstoffe, Verwendung. Ein Magenta-Rot, das kaum lichtecht war, ist Fuchsin. Auf der Florseite ausgeblichen, ist es auf der Rückseite noch rotviolett erkennbar. Es wurde vor 1900 eingesetzt. Ponceau 2R ersetzte teilweise Krapp, bevor synthetischer Krapp (Alizarin) verwendet wurde. Amaranth wurde als Ersatz von Cochenille eingesetzt.
The oriental carpet found its way into Europe via Spain, where the Moors from North Africa founded a dynasty as early as 710 AD and brought with them the skill of carpet weaving. A natural carpet industry developed in the city of Cordoba. The Islamic Nasrid dynasty built the Alhambra fortress above the town of Granada. The pomegranate became a city symbol and was later used as an ornament in textile and carpet patterns. In the 11th century, at the latest, the technique of tapestry developed in Europe, which mainly created wall hangings, so-called tapestries or tapestries, with pictorial motifs.[7] The first production centers emerged in the 14th century, first in Switzerland and Germany, then in Flanders and the Netherlands, followed by England and France. Tapestries for floors, tables, and walls were produced in the Netherlands, where the influence of Eastern motifs remained visible into the 17th century.[8] Carpets were made in England from about 1570, which were technically and stylistically based on Oriental rugs: on the one hand, Anatolian models with predominantly geometric patterns, and Persian models, came from Persian miniature painting. In the 18th century, Exeter, Moorfields, and Axminster were the main carpet production centers. In France, from the 1660s, large-format knitted tapestries were made in the Paris Gobelin manufactory, in Aubusson, and Beauvais. In contrast to the products of the Savonnerie manufacturer, which, following the example of the oriental carpets, produced high-pile, knotted textiles for floors, screens, and furniture, the French tapestries were never used as floor coverings. The production of carpets also took place in Europe again and again in homework. An example is the Pomeranian fisherman's carpets.
The woven carpet is an occidental product. The carpets produced in Europe since the 19th century are mostly machine-woven (exceptions: hand-knotted "German Smyrna carpets" and mechanically knotted "mechanical Smyrna carpets"). Depending on the nature of the woven carpets, a distinction is made between smooth, knobbed, and loop pile carpets (cut or closed loops on the surface) and velvet, plush, velour, and pile carpets. Soft carpets are z. B. the hair yarn, jute, and coconut fiber carpet, a loop carpet is the Brussels carpet (also Haarbrussel or bouclé carpet with coarse hair yarn pile), a pile carpet is the Tournay carpet. The first drafts for automatic looms were made in the 18th century. The Englishman Edmond Cartwright registered the first patent for a mechanical loom in 1785, which was developed into an operational loom by Richard Roberts in Manchester around 1826 and brought to market. In 1889 the American Northrop introduced the first fully automatic weaving machine (weaving machine). In 1767 Richard Arkwright invented the spinning throttle, the warp chair, and around 1785, the carding and the roving engine. James Hargreaves invented the spinning jenny in 1764[9], which replaced the ordinary hand spinning wheel. The introduction of power looms led to widespread uprisings. For example, in German-speaking countries, we speak of the weaver uprisings around 1784/85, 1794/95, and 1844, in England of the machine storms and especially the Luddites (around 1810).
The vast majority of carpets produced today are tufted. In this case, thread loops are inserted very close together into an existing base fabric with needles. These thread loops are then cut open. Tufted carpets are less durable than woven carpets, but they are cheaper to produce. In Europe, as in the Orient, the soft rugs are usually of the lesser variety; they are made of cow's or goat's hair, ordinary woolen yarn or jute, and are used as running rugs for covering stairs, hallways, etc. Among these are the Kidderminster rugs of double weave, woolen or cotton warp, and much heavier woolen weft; the pattern is created in the same way on the right and left but appears hostile on the back (e.g., a red design on a blue background on the front side appears as a blue pattern on a red background on the back). The plush rugs either have an uncut pile that forms small, closed nubs (Brussels rugs) or a cut pile that creates a velvety surface (velours, Tournai, Wilton, Axminster rugs). The manufacture is essentially that of plush and velvet. The pattern is usually produced with the jacquard machine, and depending on whether it contains more or fewer colors, more or fewer pile threads are pulled into each reed between two linen ground threads. The carpets are distinguished as three-, four-, five, choirs or parts.
The ornamentation of the carpets either imitates the oriental custom (especially in jacquard carpets) or covers the whole area with flowers, animals, architecture, etc. (especially in printed rugs). The first principle has become more and more popular as the aesthetically appropriate one for carpets so that in Germany, England, and Austria, naturalism only dominates cheap goods. On the other hand, the naturalistic design in the most extravagant forms is still predominant in France. Oriental carpets of all kinds are currently being reproduced in England, Austria, and Germany. In Germany, which used primarily supply chain-print carpets, rugs are also made in the Brussels and Axminster style. Cheaper rugs can be made by imprinting the design by printing the woven piece or applying the method to the pile warp before processing. The latter process produces an excellent product, exceeding carpets printed in work.
In 1854 Leopold Schoeller founded a carpet office in Düren, the Gebrüder Schoeller company. By submitting the English description, he secured the Prussian patent. The patent on these so-called printed carpets, which Leopold Schoeller received, is still kept in the Secret State Archives in Berlin, together with the associated drawings. Her trademark was the anchor. The first carpet factory in Cottbus was founded in 1861 by entrepreneur Theodor Kühn. Hand-knotted and machine-woven carpets were made from wool and jute yarn. After the takeover of this factory by Oskar Pietsch, the company gained a worldwide reputation for its oriental carpets. This company later became the Vereinigte Smyrna-Teppichfabrik AG as part of a merger. Hand-knotted and woven rugs were produced in Cottbus, e.g., Tournay carpets (velour rod technique) with different colored pile warps and jacquard patterns. Axminster carpets (velour machine weaving technology) were also produced at Smyrna in Cottbus. In 1880, Karl Wilhelm Koch and Fritz te Kock founded the company Koch & te Kock on weaving Axminster carpets in Oelsnitz. With the foundation, the Halbmond brand was also established. As early as 1913, Halbmond had become the most significant carpet weaving mill in Germany. In 1883, the brother's Carl and Adolf Vorwerk founded the Barmer carpet factory Vorwerk & Co. in Wuppertal. Initially, the family business made Brussels and Tournay carpets and upholstery fabrics. The "VORWERK carpet," registered as a trademark in 1909, competed with oriental rugs.
The Krüger & Hahn carpet factory was founded in Cottbus in 1894. She made carpets, bridges, runners, and rugs. Their specialty was hand-knotted, artistically valuable carpets. 1900 Founding of the Sächsische Kunstweberei Claviez AG GmbH in Leipzig. Carpets and upholstery fabrics were manufactured. 1916 renamed Textilosewerke und Kunstweberei Claviez AG, then from 1927 Carpet and Textilwerke AG. In 1900 the headquarters of the Claviez & Co. GmbH art weaving company was relocated from Leipzig-Plagwitz to Adorf (Vogtland). Five leading German carpet manufacturers joined forces in 1911 and asked the German government for support because German carpets were not sufficiently known and appreciated in their own country. At least that was the opinion of the operators of the largest carpet weaving mills: the Barmer carpet factory Vorwerk & Co, the Vogtland weaving mill Koch & te Kock, the Saxon art weaving mill Claviez, the Berlin United Smyrna carpet factories, and the company Gebrüder Schoeller, Düren. In the House of Representatives in Berlin, the companies now have a forum to present their goods. More and more oriental carpets were coming to Germany – imports had tripled between 1906 and 1910 alone. As a rule, they were costly and, therefore, no competition for the weavers, but cheaper carpets of inferior quality were increasingly being imported, and such products were the subject of criticism.
From 1953, a wide variety of carpet weaving mills in the GDR – such as Adoros, Koch, te Kock[11] and Tefzet – were combined to form the VEB Halbmond rug in the VEB Kombinat DEKO Plauen. In addition to the usual carpet motifs, carpets with socialist slogans and motifs were also made here. These mainly were created on behalf of government agencies.
From 1960, copies of traditional patterns were also made in European countries like Romania and Bulgaria. A little later, around 1970, in Asian countries, first in Pakistan and India, and later in China. Berber, Tibetan, and Nepalese carpets have found their market. The changes in technology, communication, and economy caused by globalization have also left their mark on the carpet sector: the changes of the 20th century with the dying out of nomadism, people becoming sedentary, orders for the European market, the material wool giving way to cotton, in the structure and the emergence of manufacturers in the original carpet centers and other regions are more significant than the changes and developments in the documented, 2500-year-old carpet tradition before.
Giovanni Curatola: Carpets: Materials, Knot Types, Patterns, History, Origin., Delphin Verlag, Munich 1981
Volkmar Gantzhorn: Oriental carpets. A presentation of the iconographic and iconological development from the beginning to the 18th century. Taschen Verlag, Cologne 1998
Yves Mikaeloff and others (Ed.): Carpets. Tradition and art in the Orient and Occident. (Original title: L'art du tapis. Editions Mengès, Paris 1996) Translation into German by Jörg Meidenbauer. Koenemann, Cologne 1997
MC Whiting: The Identification of Dyes in Old Oriental Textiles. ICOM Committee for Conservation, ICOM Report 78/9/2, 1978
H. Böhmer, W. Brüggemann: The chemical and botanical investigation of the colors in Anatolian carpets. In: H. Böhmer, W. Brüggemann: Carpets of farmers and nomads in Anatolia. Art & Antiques, 1980.
H. Schweppe: How can you tell whether a carpet is dyed with natural dyes or synthetic dyes? Lecture at the "International Conference on Oriental Carpets," April 28 – May 1, 1978, Munich.
Explanations of meaning, word origin, synonyms, translations.
Collection of images, videos, and audio files.
Deutsches Museum Munich Loom.
Deutsches Museum Munich Jacquard loom.
Deutsches Museum Munich The Spinning Jenny by James Hargreaves.
Friedrich Kluge, Alfred Götze: Etymological dictionary of the German language. 20th ed. by Walther Mitzka, De Gruyter, Berlin/New York 1967; Reprint ("21st unchanged edition") ibid. 1975.
Liège université / University of Salzburg: Atlas of everyday German. (atlas-alltagssprache.de [accessed August 20, 2021]).
BauNetz Media GmbH: Types and forms of textile coverings | floor | Textile floor coverings | Baunetz_Knowledge. In: Baunetz Knowledge. (baunetzwissen.de [accessed January 18, 2018]).
The State Hermitage Museum. Retrieved January 18, 2018 (English).
Retrieved January 18, 2018 (German (Sie-Anrede)).
Rijksmuseum, accessed 18 January 2018.
Deutsches Museum: Deutsches Museum: Spinning Jenny. Retrieved January 18, 2018.
A red carpet is usually a long, unrolled carpet on which prominent people (stars, heads of state, etc.) walk. Red carpets are often rolled out for special occasions and receptions in front of the entrance, on stairs, and at the airport. They are meant to express the importance of the people walking across them.
A scene in Aeschylus' Agamemnon contains an early mention of a red carpet: Clytemnestra, on his return from Troy, has her husband Agamemnon spread out a purple carpet; his feet do not touch the ground. However, Agamemnon initially refuses to walk on the mat, pointing out that a red carpet is due to the gods. Agamemnon is finally persuaded by pointing out that Priam would not have hesitated to step on the rug. However, before stepping onto the carpet, he has his shoes removed so as not to anger the gods even more. The German President's red carpet, used in salutes with military honors, is 65 meters long.
Weaving, weaving or the art of weaving, is one of the oldest techniques for producing textile fabrics, in which at least two thread systems, the warp (warp thread) and the weft (weft thread), are crossed at right angles. The pre-tensioned warp threads form the carrier, into which the weft threads are successively drawn from one selvage to the other through the entire weaving width. The product is known in technical terms as a fabric, a time that includes both cloth (colloquially: "cloth") and other products such as woven carpets or wallpaper.
The weaving technique differs from braiding in that the threads do not cross at right angles but diagonally. Related to, but not identical to, weaving is picture weaving, in which the weft threads are not worked through the entire width of the weave but are only worked back and forth to the edge of a given color area. The device required for weaving is the loom. The original handloom was improved over the millennia, becoming increasingly automated from the 18th century and finally being replaced by the weaving machine in the Industrial Revolution. The vast majority of global production today is machine-made.
After wood and stone processing, weaving is one of the oldest crafts of humankind and has been proven for 32,000 years, considerably longer than pottery.[1][2] Remains of fabric from robes have been found in ancient Egyptian burial chambers. Weight looms have been known since the Neolithic at the latest. The warp threads were attached to a horizontal beam with a weaving weight and left hanging. Some researchers assume that weaving was practiced as early as the Upper Palaeolithic, as evidenced by clay impressions from the Moravian Pavlov. Several Neolithic textiles made of either flax or wool have survived from the wetland settlements in Switzerland. Bark bast (from lime, elm, and oak) was also used. Weight looms were used until the Middle Ages. Weaving material from the Bronze Age is best known for finds in Danish tree coffins. Among other things, Egtved is home to the first known miniskirt in history.
Woven textiles and carpets helped the trading Assyrians, Babylonians, and later the Phoenicians to become wealthy. They maintained their technical lead in the textile industry in Asia Minor, Persia, and Arabia well into the 13th century. The Greeks also knew weaving. In Homer, weaving, spinning, and making garments seem to have been the main occupations of women. According to other traditions, pictorial weaving competed seriously with painting in the artistic field. Vase pictures from the black-figure period also show the use of the weight loom here. Fabrics made from materials other than wool are known from the Roman Empire: Egyptian and Spanish linen and Chinese silk. The Germans used both wool and linen yarns. They wove intricate patterns, as evidenced by the famous Thorsberg cloak. In the early Middle Ages and the Romanesque art period, oriental weaving dominated the world market. Sasanian, Saracen, and Byzantine silk and wool fabrics were decorated and worked with rich ornaments. They were used to make ceremonial garments for emperors, princes, knights, and the clergy. Silk also came to Europe via Byzantium.
Weaving also began to flourish as an industry in Europe. In the middle of the 15th century, there was a weavers' guild in Augsburg with over 700 members. In many places, such as in the Mühlviertel, communities with a high proportion of weavers, often half the population, held their weaver markets. One of the most important centers of traditional linen weaving in Württemberg was Laichingen, and Bielefeld was also known as a linen town. In many places in Germany, so-called in-house weaving mills developed over the centuries, enabling an additional meager income source for homework. The publishing system and trading posts were partners of the house weavers. They gave the orders, sold the yarn to the weavers, and bought the finished goods. With the advent of industrial weaving, home weaving disappeared.
For millennia, variants of the simple vertical warp (high loom) loom were used worldwide. Only with the invention of the loom with a horizontal warp (flat loom) in the High Middle Ages did production technology change. One of the forerunners of the mechanical loom was the so-called ribbon mill, developed around 1600 and commonly used in ribbon weaving. They made it possible to weave twenty or more ribbons on one loom at a time. Until the 18th century, the loom was significantly further developed. At that time, John Kay invented the so-called rapid shooter for the automatic movement of the shooter. The first mechanical loom was built by the clergyman Edmond Cartwright in 1784. Another revolutionary innovation was introduced by the Lyon silk weaver J.M. Jacquard introduced. With his loom, built-in 1805, the warp threads can be raised and lowered individually with the help of punch cards, which makes it possible to weave fabrics with large patterns. This created an unlimited variety of designs compared to the limited weave patterns in dobby weaving. The mechanical looms were driven via transmissions by steam engines and water wheels. The first electric drive for a mechanical loom was presented in 1879 by W. von Siemens at the Berlin trade exhibition.
Small tools such as cleaning needles, cleaning scissors, and cleaning irons are used to repair - the so-called cleaning - occasional weaving errors. Of these, the cleaning iron, standard size 13 cm, with its sharp cutting edge, is particularly suitable for cutting off thin threads and with the other side for pushing woven knots through to the back of the fabric.
Handweaving is mainly practiced as a craft in the 21st century but is also used in occupational therapy, both on table looms and looms.
Almost every textile museum has one or more looms on display. Old looms can also be found in many local history museums, industrial museums, and educational institutions. Some museums specialize in specific web products. The Mindelheim Textile Museum has one of the largest publicly accessible collections of paraments and other church textiles; the House of Silk Culture in Krefeld presents the topic of silk weaving.
The factory of the weavers' colony is located in the monastery of Zinna.
In the Augsburg State Textile and Industry Museum (Tim), visitors can experience fully functional weaving machines. Historical models (from the 1880s onwards) produce alongside today's modern high-tech devices. In Bocholt (near Münster, North Rhine-Westphalia), the Bocholt Textile Museum shows a large number of looms. In the Müller cloth factory (LVR industrial museum) in Euskirchen, among other things four heavy looms (from the companies Schönherr, Chemnitz and Grossenhainer Webstuhl- und Maschinenfabrik AG - both Saxony) for wool fabrics in operation. in the Greiz local history museum (Thuringia), there is a 'textile demonstration workshop' in which the history of worsted weaving in Greiz and the surrounding area is documented and demonstrated on machines.[3] In Haslach a der Mühl in the Mühlviertel (Upper Austria), a weaving museum, a textile school, and the cultural association Textile Kultur Haslach organize a weaving market every year symposium and weaving courses. Hinsbeck (NRW): Textile Museum The Barn The Textile Museum of Bennet AG in Wehr-Bennet shows, in addition to a worth seeing exhibition on weaving, many impressions of the textile industry in Germany in the last century.
The knitting museum depicts the history of the knitting industry in the Albstadt area (about halfway between Stuttgart and Lake Constance) from 1750 to the present day. It is in a former building of the textile machine factory Mayer & Cie, i.e., in an industrial monument.[4] In Neumünster is the Cloth + Technology Textile Museum. The tradition and history of damask and terry weaving in Lusatia are documented on machines and devices in the German Damask and Terrycloth Museum in Großschönau.[5] In the Brandenburg Textile Museum in Forst (Lausitz), cloth production is shown in the building of a former textile factory, and cloth production can be experienced live in a demonstration workshop using functioning historical machines.[6] The Saxon Industrial Museum in Chemnitz in Crimmitschau in the former Pfau cloth weaving mill shows the process from the washed raw wool to the finished cloth lives on machines that have been preserved in their original form. Textile machines are also displayed in the museum in Chemnitz, and a steam engine still works with steam.[7] In the linen weaving town of Laichingen on the Swabian Alb, there is a local history and weaving museum with information on flax cultivation and processing, weaving with the handloom, and samples of old craftsmanship from the tradition of Laichingen bed linen production. In Schwielowsee (Geltow) near Berlin is the hand weaving mill "Henni Jaensch-Zeymer". The workshop, which has existed since 1927, is both a production facility and a museum. The entire manufacturing process can be observed on 200 to 300-year-old handlooms. See the "Henni Jaensch-Zeymer" active handloom museum. Switzerland: Textile Museum St. Gallen
ribbon weaving tablet weaving braids, knitted fabrics List of Textile Museums pattern (textile), the smallest complete unit of which is the repeat (textile) weaver uprising shuttle
Olga Soffer: Recovering perishable technologies through wear on tools - Preliminary evidence for Upper Paleolithic weaving and net making. In: Current Anthropology. Vol. 45, No. 3, June 2004, pp. 407–413. ↑ Bruce Bower: Stone Age twining unraveled - New finds suggest that people used plant fibers for sewing and other purposes in western Asia by 32,000 years ago. In: Science. Volume 11, September 2009. ↑ www.thueringen-tourismus.de ↑ Albstadt - Mesh Museum ↑ German Damascus and Terrycloth Museum Großschönau ↑ Demonstration workshop Brandenburg Textile Museum Forst ↑ Saxon Industrial Museum Chemnitz
Olga Soffer: Palaeolithic perishables made permanent. Antiquity 74, 2000, 812-821
Weaving is a method of textile production in which two distinct sets of yarns or threads are interlaced at right angles to form a fabric or cloth. Other methods are knitting, crocheting, felting, and braiding or plaiting. The longitudinal threads are called the warp, and the lateral threads are the weft, woof, or filling. (Weft is an old English word meaning "that which is woven"; compare leave and left.[a]) The method in which these threads are inter-woven affects the characteristics of the cloth.[1] Cloth is usually woven on a loom, a device that holds the warp threads in place while filling threads are woven through them. A fabric band that meets this definition of cloth (warp threads with a weft thread winding between) can also be made using other methods, including tablet weaving, backstrap loom, or other techniques that can be done without looms.[2]
The warp and filling threads interlace and are called the weave. Most woven products are created with one of three basic weaves: plain weave, satin weave, or twill weave. Woven cloth can be direct or classic (in one color or a simple pattern) or woven in decorative or artistic design.
N general, weaving involves using a loom to interlace two threads at right angles: the warp, which runs longitudinally, and the weft (older woof) that crosses it. One warp thread is called an end, and one weft thread is called a pick. The warp threads are held taut and parallel to each other, typically in a loom. There are many types of looms.[3]
Weaving can be summarized as a repetition of these three actions, also called the primary motions of the loom.
Shedding: where the warp threads (ends) are separated by raising or lowering heald frames (heddles) to form a clear space where the pick can pass
Picking: where the weft or pick is propelled across the loom by hand, an air jet, a dagger, or a shuttle
Beating-up or battening: where the weft is pushed up against the fell of the cloth by the reed[4]
The warp is divided into two overlapping groups or lines (most often adjacent threads belonging to the opposite group) that run in two planes, one above another, so that the shuttle can be passed between them in a straight motion. Then, the upper group is lowered by the loom mechanism, and the lower group is raised (shedding), allowing the shuttle to pass in the opposite direction, also in a straight motion. Repeating these actions forms a fabric mesh, but the final distance between the adjacent wefts would be irregular and far too large without beating up.
The secondary motions of the loom are the
Let off motion: The warp is let off the warp beam at a regulated speed to make the filling even and of the required design.
Take up motion: Take up the woven fabric in a regulated manner to maintain the density of filling.
The tertiary motions of the loom are the stop motions: to stop the loom in the event of a thread break. The two main stop motions are the
Warp stop motion
Weft stop motion
The principal parts of a loom are the frame, the warp-beam or weavers beam, the cloth roll (apron bar), the heddles, their mounting, and the reed. The warp beam is a wooden or metal cylinder on the back of the loom on which the warp is delivered. The warp threads extend in parallel order from the warp beam to the front of the loom, where they are attached to the cloth roll. Each line or group of kin of the warp passes through an opening (eye) in a heddle. The warp threads are separated by the heddles into two or more groups, each controlled and automatically drawn up and down by the motion of the heddles. In the case of tiny patterns, the movement of the heddles is controlled by "cams," which move up the heddles utilizing a frame called a harness; in larger prints, the heddles are controlled by a dobby mechanism, where the healds are raised according to pegs inserted into a revolving drum. Where a complex design is required, the healds are raised by harness cords attached to a Jacquard machine. Every time the harness (the heddles) moves up or down, an opening (shed) is made between the warp threads, through which the pick is inserted. Traditionally the weft thread is inserted by a shuttle.[4][5]
The continuous weft thread is carried on a pirn in a shuttle that passes through the shed on a conventional loom. A handloom weaver could propel the shuttle by throwing it from side to side with a picking stick. The "picking" on a power loom is done by rapidly hitting the shuttle from each side using an overpack or under pick mechanism controlled by cams 80–250 times a minute.[4] When a pirn is depleted, it is ejected from the shuttle and replaced with the next pirn held in a battery attached to the loom. Multiple shuttle boxes allow more than one shuttle to be used. Each can carry a different color which allows banding across the loom.
The rapier-type weaving machines do not have shuttles, and they propel cut lengths of weft utilizing small grippers or rapiers that pick up the filling thread and carry it halfway across the loom, where another dagger picks it up and pulls it the rest of the way.[6] Some take the filling yarns across the loom at over 2,000 meters per minute. Manufacturers such as Picanol have reduced the mechanical adjustments to a minimum and control all the functions through a computer with a graphical user interface. Other types use compressed air to insert the pick. They are all fast, versatile and quiet.[7]
The warp is sized in a starch mixture for smoother running. The loom warped (loomed or dressed), bypassing the sized warp threads by attaching two or more heddles to harnesses. The power weavers loom misinterpreted by separate workers. Most looms used for industrial purposes have a machine that ties new warps threads to the waste of previously used warps threads while still on the loom, then an operator rolls the old and new threads back on the warp beam. The harnesses are controlled by cams, dobbies, or a Jacquard head.
The raising and lowering sequence of warp threads in various arrangements give rise to many possible weave structures:
Plain weave: plain, and hopsacks, poplin, taffeta,[8] poult-de-soie, pibiones, and grosgrain
Twill weave: these are described by weft float followed by warp float, arranged to give a diagonal pattern; examples are 2/1 twill, 3/3 twill, or 1/2 twill. These are softer fabrics than plain weaves.[9]
Satin weave: satins and sateens[10]
Complex computer-generated interlacings, such as Jacquard fabric
Pile fabrics: fabrics with a surface of cut threads (a pile), such as velvets and velveteens[10]
Selvage refers to the fabric's edge, which may be marked with the manufacturer's detail. It is a narrow edge of a woven fabric parallel to its length.[11]
Thrums are the remainder yarns for tying on the loom. The portion that is not wearable warp. It is also called loom waste.
Both warp and weft can be visible in the final product. Spacing the warp more closely can completely cover the weft that binds it, giving a warp-faced textile such as repp weave.[8] Conversely, if the warp is spread out, the weft can slide down and completely cover the warp, giving a weft-faced textile, such as a tapestry or a Kilim rug. There are a variety of loom styles for hand weaving and tapestry.
There are some indications that weaving was already known in the Paleolithic Era, as early as 27,000 years ago. An indistinct textile impression has been found at the Dolní Věstonice site.[15] According to the find, the weavers of the Upper Palaeolithic were manufacturing various cordage types, producing plaited basketry and sophisticated twined and plain woven cloth. The artifacts include imprints in clay and burned remnants of material.[16]
The oldest known textiles found in the Americas are remnants of six finely woven textiles and cordage in Guitarrero Cave, Peru. The weavings, made from plant fibers, are dated between 10100 and 9080 BCE.[17][18]
In 2013 a piece of cloth woven from hemp was found in burial F. 7121 at the Çatalhöyük site,[19] suggested being from around 7000 B.C.[20][21] Further finds come from the Neolithic civilization preserved in the pile dwellings in Switzerland.[22]
Another extant fragment from the Neolithic was found in Fayum, dated to about 5000 BCE.[23] This fragment is woven at about 12 threads by nine threads per centimeter in a plain weave. Flax was the predominant fiber in Egypt (3600 BCE) and had continued popularity in the Nile Valley, though wool became the primary fiber used in other cultures around 2000 BCE.[citation needed].
The oldest-known weavings in North America come from the Windover Archaeological Site in Florida. Dating from 4900 to 6500 B.C. and made from plant fibers, the Windover hunter-gatherers produced "finely crafted" twined and plain-weave textiles.[24][25] Eighty-seven pieces of fabric were found associated with 37 burials.[citation needed] Researchers have identified seven different weaves in the fabric.[citation needed] One kind of fabric had 26 strands per inch (10 strands per centimeter). There were also weaves using two-strand and three-strand wefts. A round bag made from twine was found, as well as matting. The yarn was probably made from palm leaves. Cabbage palm saw palmetto and scrub palmetto are all common in the area and would have been so 8,000 years ago.[26][27]
Evidence of weaving as a commercial household industry in the historical region of Macedonia has been found at the Olynthus site. When Philip II destroyed the city in 348 BC, artifacts were preserved in the houses. Loom weights were found in many homes, enough to produce cloth to meet the household's needs, but some of the places contained more loom weights, enough for commercial production, and one of the houses was adjacent to the agora and contained three shops where many coins were found. Such homes were probably engaged in commercial textile manufacture.
Weaving was known in all the great civilizations, but no clear line of causality has been established. Early looms required two people to create the shed and one person to pass through the filling. Early looms wove a fixed length of cloth, but later ones allowed warp to be wound out as the fell progressed. Weaving became more straightforward when the warp was sized.
Around the 4th century B.C., cotton cultivation and the knowledge of its spinning and weaving in Meroë reached a high level. The export of textiles was one of Kush's primary sources of wealth. Aksumite King Ezana boasted in his inscription that he destroyed large cotton plantations in Meroë during his conquest of the region.
The Indigenous people of the Americas wove cotton textiles throughout tropical and subtropical America and in the South American Andes of wool from camelids, primarily domesticated llamas and alpacas. Cotton and the camelids were both domesticated by about 4,000 BCE.[30][31] American weavers are "credited with independently inventing nearly every non-mechanized technique."[32]
In the Inca Empire of the Andes, both men and women produced textiles.[33] Women mostly did their weaving using backstrap looms to make small pieces of cloth and vertical frames and single-heddle looms for more significant amounts.[34] Men used upright looms. The Inca elite valued combi, a delicate tapestry-woven textile produced on vertical looms. The elite often offered combi as gifts of reciprocity to lords (other aristocracies) in the Empire. In regions under the direct control of the Inca, unique artisans produced combi for the elite. Women who created cumbia in these regions were called Callas or mamaconas, and men were called cumbicamayos.[33] Andean textile weavings were of practical, symbolic, religious, and ceremonial importance and used as currency, tribute, and a determinant of social class and rank. Sixteenth-century Spanish colonists were impressed by the quality and quantity of textiles produced by the Inca Empire.[35] Some of the techniques and designs are still in use in the 21st century.
Other elements onto the finished woven textile—pre-Columbian Andean weavers created elaborate cloth by focusing on "structural" designs involving manipulating the warp and weft of the fabric itself. Andeans used "tapestry techniques; double-, triple- and quadruple-cloth techniques; gauze weaves; warp-patterned weaves; discontinuous warp or scaffold weaves; and plain weaves," among many other techniques, in addition to the superstructural methods listed above.
The weaving of silk from silkworm cocoons has been known in China since about 3500 BCE. The silk that was intricately woven and dyed, showing a well-developed craft, has been found in a Chinese tomb dating back to 2700 BCE.
Silk weaving in China was an intricate process that was very involved. Men and women, usually from the same family, had their roles in weaving. Both men and women did the actual work of weaving.[38] Women were often weavers since it was a way they could contribute to the household income while staying at home.[39] Women would usually weave simpler designs within the household while men would be in charge of weaving more intricate and complex pieces of clothing.[40] The process of sericulture and weaving emphasized the idea that men and women should work together instead of women being subordinate to men. Weaving became an integral part of Chinese women's social identity. Several rituals and myths were associated with promoting silk weaving, especially as a symbol of female power. Weaving contributed to the balance between men's and women's economic contributions and had many economic benefits.[39][41]
There were many paths to the occupation of the weaver. Women usually married into the work, belonged to a family of weavers, and lived in a location with excellent weather conditions that allowed for the process of silk weaving. Weavers usually belonged to the peasant class.[42] Silk weaving became a specialized job requiring specific technology and equipment completed domestically within households.[43] Although most of the silk weaving was done within the confines of the home and family, some specialized workshops hired skilled silk weavers. These workshops took care of the weaving process, although raising the silkworms and reeling the silk remained work for peasant families. The silk woven in workshops rather than homes was of higher quality since the seminar could afford to hire the best weavers.[44] These weavers were usually men who operated more complicated looms, such as the wooden draw-loom.[45] This created a competitive market for silk weavers.
The quality and ease of the weaving process depended on the silk produced by the silkworms. The easiest silk to work with came from breeds of silkworms that spun their cocoons so that they could be unwound in one long strand.[40] The reeling or unwinding of silkworm cocoons is started by placing the cocoons in boiling water to break apart the silk filaments and kill the silkworm pupae. Women would then find the end of the strands of silk by sticking their hands into the boiling water. Usually, this task was done by girls aged eight to twelve, while the more complex jobs were given to older women.[46] They would then create a silk thread, which could vary in thickness and strength from the unwound cocoons.[40]
After the silk reeling, the silk would be dyed before the weaving process began. There were many different looms and tools for weaving. A wooden draw-loom or pattern loom was used for high-quality and intricate designs.[45] This loom would require two or three weavers and be usually operated by men. Other smaller looms, such as the waist loom, could be performed by a single woman and were traditionally used domestically.[45]
Sericulture and silk weaving spread to Korea by 200 BCE, Khotan by 50 C.E., and Japan by about 300 CE.
The pit-treadle loom may have originated in India though most authorities establish the invention in China.[47] Pedals were added to operate heddles. Such devices also appeared in Persia, Sudan, Egypt, and possibly the Arabian Peninsula by the Middle Ages, where "the operator sat with his feet in a pit below a fairly low-slung loom." In 700 CE, horizontal and vertical looms could be found in many parts of Asia, Africa, and Europe. In Africa, the rich dressed in cotton while the poorer wore wool.[48] By the 12th century, it had come to Europe either from the Byzantium or Moorish Spain, where the mechanism was raised higher above the ground on a more substantial frame.
In the Philippines, numerous pre-colonial weaving traditions exist among different ethnic groups. They used various plant fibers, mainly abacá or banana, including tree cotton, buri palm (locally known as buntal), other palms, various grasses (like commuting and taking), and barkcloth.[50][51] The oldest evidence of weaving traditions is Neolithic stone tools used for preparing barkcloth found in archeological sites in Sagung Cave of southern Palawan and Arku Cave of Peñablanca, Cagayan. The latter has been dated to around 1255–605 BCE.
The predominant fiber was wool, followed by linen and nettle cloth for the lower classes. Cotton was introduced to Sicily and Spain in the 9th century. When the Normans captured Sicily, they took the technology to Northern Italy and then the rest of Europe. Silk fabric production was reintroduced towards the end of this period, and the more sophisticated silk weaving techniques were applied to the other staples.[53]
The weaver worked at home and marketed his cloth at fairs.[53] Warp-weighted looms were commonplace in Europe before introducing horizontal looms in the 10th and 11th centuries. Weaving became an urban craft, and to regulate their trade, artisans applied to establish a guild. These initially were merchant guilds but developed into separate trade guilds for each skill. The cloth merchant who was a member of a city's weavers guild was allowed to sell cloth; he acted as a middleman between the merchant's weavers and the purchaser. The trade guilds controlled quality and the training needed before an artisan could call himself a weaver.[53]
By the 13th century, an organizational change took place, and a system of putting out was introduced. The cloth merchant purchased the wool and provided it to the weaver, who sold his produce back to the merchant. The merchant controlled the rates of pay and economically dominated the cloth industry.[53] The merchants' prosperity is reflected in the wool towns of eastern England; Norwich, Bury St Edmunds, and Lavenham are good examples. Wool was a political issue.[54] The supply of thread has always limited the output of a weaver. At that time, the spindle spinning method was replaced by the great wheel, and soon after, the treadle-driven spinning wheel. The loom remained the same, but it could be operated continuously with the increased volume of thread.[53]
The 14th century saw considerable flux in population. The 13th century had been a period of relative peace; Europe became overpopulated. Poor weather led to a series of poor harvests and starvation. There was a significant loss of life in the Hundred Year's War. Then in 1346, Europe was struck by the Black Death, and the population was reduced by up to a half. Arable land was labor-intensive, and sufficient workers could no longer be found. Land prices dropped, and the land was sold and put into sheep pastures. Traders from Florence and Bruges bought the wool, then sheep-owning landlords started to weave thread outside the jurisdiction of the city and trade guilds. The weavers started by working in their own homes then production was moved into purpose-built buildings. The working hours and the amount of work was regulated. A factory system had replaced the putting-out system.[53]
The migration of the Huguenot Weavers, Calvinists fleeing from religious persecution in mainland Europe to Britain around the time of 1685, challenged the English weavers of cotton, woolen, and worsted cloth, who subsequently learned the Huguenots' superior techniques.
Colonial America relied heavily on Great Britain for manufactured goods of all kinds. British policy encouraged the production of raw materials in colonies and discouraged manufacturing. The Wool Act of 1699 restricted the export of colonial wool.[56][57] As a result, many people wove cloth from locally produced fibers. The colonists also used wool, cotton, and flax (linen) for weaving, though hemp could be made into a serviceable canvas and heavy cloth. They could get one cotton crop each year; until the invention of the cotton gin, it was a labor-intensive process to separate the seeds from the fibers. Functional tape, bands, straps, and fringe were woven on the box, and paddle looms.[58]
A plain weave was preferred as the added skill and time required to make more complex weaves kept them from common use. Sometimes designs were woven into the fabric, but most were added after weaving using woodblock prints or embroidery.
Before the Industrial Revolution, weaving was a manual craft, and wool was the principal staple. In the great wool districts, a factory system had been introduced, but weavers worked from home on a putting-out system in the uplands. The wooden looms of that time might be broad or narrow; broad looms were those too wide for the weaver to pass the shuttle through the shed, so the weaver needed an expensive assistant (often an apprentice). This ceased to be necessary after John Kay invented the flying shuttle in 1733. The shuttle and the picking stick sped up the process of weaving.[59] There was thus a shortage of thread or a surplus of weaving capacity. The opening of the Bridgewater Canal in June 1761 allowed cotton to be brought into Manchester, an area rich in fast-flowing streams that could be used to power machinery. Spinning was the first to be mechanized (spinning jenny, spinning mule), leading to limitless thread for the weaver.
Edmund Cartwright first proposed building a weaving machine that would function similar to recently developed cotton-spinning mills in 1784, drawing scorn from critics who said the weaving process was too nuanced to automate.[60] He built a factory at Doncaster and obtained patents between 1785 and 1792. In 1788, his brother Major John Cartwright built Revolution Mill at Retford (named for the centenary of the Glorious Revolution). In 1791, he licensed his loom to the Grimshaw brothers of Manchester, but their Knott Mill burnt down the following year (possibly an arson case). Edmund Cartwright was granted a reward of £10,000 by Parliament for his efforts in 1809.[61][62] However, success in power-weaving also required improvements by others, including H. Horrocks of Stockport. Only during the two decades after about 1805 did power-weaving take hold. At that time, there were 250,000 hand weavers in the U.K.[63] Textile manufacture was one of the leading sectors in the British Industrial Revolution, but weaving was a comparatively late sector to be mechanized. The loom became semi-automatic in 1842 with Kenworthy and Bulloughs Lancashire Loom. The various innovations took weaving from a home-based artisan activity (labor-intensive and man-powered) to a steam-driven factories process. A large metal manufacturing industry grew to produce the looms, firms such as Howard & Bullough of Accrington, and Tweedales and Smalley and Platt Brothers. Most power weavings were weaving sheds in small towns circling Greater Manchester away from the cotton spinning area. The earlier combination mills where spinning and weaving took place in adjacent buildings became rarer. Wool and worsted weaving took place in West Yorkshire and, in particular, Bradford. There were large factories, such as Lister's or Drummond's, where all the processes occurred.[64] With weaving skills, both men and women emigrated and took the knowledge to their new homes in New England, to places like Pawtucket and Lowell.
Woven 'grey cloth' was then sent to the finishers, where it was bleached, dyed, and printed. Natural dyes were initially used, with synthetic dyes coming in the second half of the 19th century. Demand for new paints followed the discovery of mauveine in 1856 and its popularity in fashion. Researchers continued to explore the chemical potential of coal tar waste from the growing number of gas works in Britain and Europe, creating an entirely new sector in the chemical industry. [65]
The invention in France of the Jacquard loom, patented in 1804, enabled complicated patterned cloths to be woven by using punched cards to determine which threads of colored yarn should appear on the upper side of the fabric. The jacquard allowed individual control of each warp thread, row by row without repeating, so very complex patterns were suddenly feasible. Samples exist showing calligraphy and woven copies of engravings. Jacquards could be attached to handlooms or power looms.[66]
A distinction can be made between the role, lifestyle, and status of a handloom weaver and the power loom weaver and craft weaver. The perceived threat of the power loom led to disquiet and industrial unrest. Well-known protests movements such as the Luddites and the Chartists had handloom weavers amongst their leaders. In the early 19th-century, power weaving became viable. Richard Guest, in 1823 made a comparison of the productivity of power and handloom weavers:
An outstanding Hand Weaver, a man twenty-five or thirty years of age, will weave two pieces of nine-eighths shirting per week, each twenty-four yards long and containing one hundred and five shoots of weft in an inch, the reed of the cloth being a forty-four, Bolton count, and the warp and weft forty hanks to the pound, A Steam Loom Weaver, fifteen years of age, will in the same time weave seven similar pieces.
He then speculates about the wider economics of using power loom weavers:
it may very safely be said, that the work is done in a Steam Factory containing two hundred Looms, would, if done by hand Weavers, find employment and support for a population of more than two thousand persons.
In the 1920s the weaving workshop of the Bauhaus design school in Germany aimed to raise weaving, previously seen as a craft, to a fine art, and also to investigate the industrial requirements of modern weaving and fabrics.[69] Under the direction of Gunta Stölzl, the workshop experimented with unorthodox materials, including cellophane, fibreglass, and metal.[70] From expressionist tapestries to the development of soundproofing and light-reflective fabric, the workshop's innovative approach instigated a modernist theory of weaving.[70] Former Bauhaus student and teacher Anni Albers published the seminal 20th-century text On Weaving in 1965.[71] Other notables from the Bauhaus weaving workshop include Otti Berger, Margaretha Reichardt, and Benita Koch-Otte.
Hand weaving of Persian carpets and kilims has been an important element of the tribal crafts of many of the subregions of modern day Iran. Examples of carpet types are the Lavar Kerman carpet from Kerman and the Seraband rug from Arak.
Handloom weaving was done by both genders but men outnumbered women partially due to the strength needed to batten.[72][73] They worked from home sometimes in a well-lit attic room. The women of the house would spin the thread they needed, and attend to finishing. Later women took to weaving, they obtained their thread from the spinning mill, and working as outworkers on a piecework contract. Over time competition from the power looms drove down the piece rate and they existed in increasing poverty.
Power loom workers were usually girls and young women. They had the security of fixed hours, and except in times of hardship, such as in the cotton famine, regular income. They were paid a wage and a piece work bonus. Even when working in a combined mill, weavers stuck together and enjoyed a tight-knit community.[74] The women usually minded the four machines and kept the looms oiled and clean. They were assisted by 'little tenters', children on a fixed wage who ran errands and did small tasks. They learnt the job of the weaver by watching.[73] Often they would be half timers, carrying a green card which teacher and overlookers would sign to say they had turned up at the mill in the morning and the afternoon at the school.[75] At fourteen or so they come full-time into the mill, and started by sharing looms with an experienced worker where it was important to learn quickly as they would both be on piece work.[76] Serious problems with the loom were left to the tackler to sort out. He would inevitably be a man, as were usually the overlookers. The mill had its health and safety issues, there was a reason why the women tied their hair back with scarves. Inhaling cotton dust caused lung problems, and the noise was causing total hearing loss. Weavers would mee-maw[77][78] as normal conversation was impossible. Weavers used to 'kiss the shuttle', that is, suck thread through the eye of the shuttle. This left a foul taste in the mouth due to the oil, which was also carcinogenic.
Arts and Crafts was an international design philosophy that originated in England[80] and flourished between 1860 and 1910 (especially the second half of that period), continuing its influence until the 1930s.[81] Instigated by the artist and writer William Morris (1834–1896) during the 1860s[80] and inspired by the writings of John Ruskin (1819–1900), it had its earliest and most complete development in the British Isles[81] but spread to Europe and North America.[82] It was largely a reaction against mechanisation and the philosophy advocated of traditional craftsmanship using simple forms and often medieval, romantic or folk styles of decoration. Handweaving was highly regarded and taken up as a decorative art.
Textile weaving, using cotton dyed with pigments, was a dominant craft among pre-contact tribes of the American southwest, including various Pueblo peoples, the Zuni, and the Ute tribes. The first Spaniards to visit the region wrote about seeing Navajo blankets. With the introduction of Navajo-Churro sheep, the resulting woolen products have become very well known. By the 18th century the Navajo had begun to import yarn with their favorite color, Bayeta red. Using an upright loom, the Navajos wove blankets worn as garments and then rugs after the 1880s for trade. Navajo traded for commercial wool, such as Germantown, imported from Pennsylvania.[citation needed] Under the influence of European-American settlers at trading posts, Navajos created new and distinct styles, including "Two Gray Hills" (predominantly black and white, with traditional patterns), "Teec Nos Pos" (colorful, with very extensive patterns), "Ganado" (founded by Don Lorenzo Hubbell), red dominated patterns with black and white, "Crystal" (founded by J. B. Moore), Oriental and Persian styles (almost always with natural dyes), "Wide Ruins," "Chinlee," banded geometric patterns, "Klagetoh," diamond type patterns, "Red Mesa" and bold diamond patterns. Many of these patterns exhibit a fourfold symmetry, which is thought to embody traditional ideas about harmony, or hózhó.
Among the indigenous people of the Amazon basin densely woven palm-bast mosquito netting, or tents, were utilized by the Panoans, Tupinambá, Western Tucano, Yameo, Záparoans, and perhaps by the indigenous peoples of the central Huallaga River basin (Steward 1963:520). Aguaje palm-bast (Mauritia flexuosa, Mauritia minor, or swamp palm) and the frond spears of the Chambira palm (Astrocaryum chambira, A.munbaca, A.tucuma, also known as Cumare or Tucum) have been used for centuries by the Urarina of the Peruvian Amazon to make cordage, net-bags hammocks, and to weave fabric. Among the Urarina, the production of woven palm-fiber goods is imbued with varying degrees of an aesthetic attitude, which draws its authentication from referencing the Urarina's primordial past.[citation needed] Urarina mythology attests to the centrality of weaving and its role in engendering Urarina society. The post-diluvial creation myth accords women's weaving knowledge a pivotal role in Urarina social reproduction. [83] Even though palm-fiber cloth is regularly removed from circulation through mortuary rites, Urarina palm-fiber wealth is neither completely inalienable, nor fungible since it is a fundamental medium for the expression of labor and exchange. The circulation of palm-fiber wealth stabilizes a host of social relationships, ranging from marriage and fictive kinship (compadrazco, spiritual compeership) to perpetuating relationships with the deceased.
Warp and weft are the two basic components used in weaving to turn thread or yarn into fabric. The lengthwise or longitudinal warp yarns are held stationary in tension on a frame or loom while the transverse weft (sometimes woof) is drawn through and inserted over and under the warp.[1] A single thread of the weft crossing the warp is called a pick. Terms vary (for instance, in North America, the weft is sometimes referred to as the fill or the filling yarn).[2][3] Each individual warp thread in a fabric is called a warp end or end.[2][3]
Inventions during the 18th century spurred the Industrial Revolution, with the "picking stick"[4] and the "flying shuttle" (John Kay, 1733) speeding up production of cloth. The power loom patented by Edmund Cartwright in 1785 allowed sixty picks per minute.
The word weft derives from the Old English word wefan, to weave. Warp means "that which is thrown away" (Old English wearp, from weorpan, to throw, cf. German werfen, Dutch werpen).
The warp is the set of yarns or other things stretched in place on a loom before the weft is introduced during the weaving process. It is regarded as the longitudinal set in a finished fabric with two or more sets of elements.[6]
The term is also used for a set of yarns established before the interworking of weft yarns by some other method, such as finger manipulation, yielding wrapped or twined structures. Very simple looms use a spiral warp, in which the warp is made up of a single, very long yarn wound in a spiral pattern around a pair of sticks or beams.[7]
The warp must be strong to be held under high tension during the weaving process, unlike the weft which carries almost no tension. This requires the yarn used for warp ends, or individual warp threads, to be made of spun and plied fibre. Traditionally wool, linen, alpaca, and silk were used. However, improvements in spinning technology during the Industrial Revolution created cotton yarn of sufficient strength to be used in mechanized weaving. Later, artificial or man-made fibres such as nylon or rayon were employed.
While most weaving is weft-faced, warp-faced textiles are created using densely arranged warp threads. In these the design is in the warp, requiring all colors to be decided upon and placed during the first part of the weaving process, which cannot be changed. Such limitations of color placement create weavings defined by length-wise stripes and vertical designs. Many South American cultures, including the ancient Incas and Aymaras, employed backstrap weaving, which uses the weight of the weaver's body to control the tension of the loom.[8]
Because the weft does not have to be stretched on a loom the way the warp is, it can generally be less strong. It is usually made of spun fibre, originally wool, flax and cotton, today often of synthetic fibre such as nylon or rayon.
The weft is threaded through the warp using a "shuttle", air jets or "rapier grippers". Handlooms were the original weaver's tool, with the shuttle being threaded through alternately raised warps by hand.
The expression "warp and weft" (also "warp and woof" and "woof and warp") is used metaphorically the way "fabric" is; e.g., "the warp and woof of a student's life" equates to "the fabric of a student's life". Warp and weft are sometimes used even more generally in literature to describe the basic dichotomy of the world we live in, as in, up/down, in/out, black/white, Sun/Moon, yin/yang, etc. The expression is also used similarly for the underlying structure upon which something is built. The terms "warp" and "woof" are also found in some English translations of the Bible in the discussion of mildews found in cloth materials in Leviticus 13:48-59.
Knot density is a traditional measure for quality of handmade or knotted pile carpets. It refers to the number of knots, or knot count, per unit of surface area - typically either per square inch (kpsi) or per square centimeter (kpsc), but also per decimeter or meter (kpsd or kpsm). Number of knots per unit area is directly proportional to the quality of carpet.[1][2][3][4] Density may vary from 25 to 1,000 knots per square inch (4 to 155 knots per square centimetre) or higher, where ≤80 kpsi is poor quality, 120 to 330 kpsi is medium to good, and ≥330 kpsi is very good quality.[2] The inverse, knot ratio, is also used to compare characteristics.[5][6] Knot density = warp×weft while knot ratio = warp/weft. For comparison: 100,000/square meter = 1,000/square decimeter = 65/square inch = 179/gereh.
For two carpets of the same age, origin, condition and design, the one with the higher number of knots will be the more valuable. Knot density is normally measured in knots per square inch (KPSI) which is simply the number of vertical knots across one inch of carpet multiplied by the number of horizontal knots in the same area. Average knot density varies between region and design. A rug could have a knot density half that of another yet still be more valuable, KPSI is only one measurement of quality and value in Persian carpets.[7]
Knot density is related to and affects or affected by the thickness of the length of the pile and the width of the warp and woof,[8] and also the designs and motifs used and their characteristics and appearance.[8] "In rugs with a high knot density, curvilinear, elaborate motifs are possible. In those with a low knot density (as well as kilims), simpler, rectilinear, motifs tend to prevail."[3] "A carpet design with a high knot density is better adapted to intricate and curvilinear designs, which of necessity must have a shorter pile length to avoid looking blurry. A carpet with a lesser knot density is better adapted to bold, geometric designs and can utilize a long pile for softer, more reflective surface that appeals to the sense of touch."[9]
Hand-tying of knots is a very labour-intensive task. An average weaver can tie almost 10,000 knots per day. More difficult patterns with an above-average knot density can only be woven by a skillful weaver, thus increasing the production costs even more. An average weaver may tie 360 knots per hour (1/10 seconds), while 1200 knots approaches the maximum a skilful weaver can tie per hour.[2]
In the late fifteenth century a "carpet design revolution" occurred, made possible by finer yarns, and before this time it is rare to find carpets with ≥120 kpsi but by the next century carpets with three to four times that density were fairly common.[9] For example, the Pazyryk carpet (ca. 400 BC) is around 234 kpsi and the Ardabil Carpets (ca. 1550 AD) are 300–350 kpsi. A fragment of a silk Mughal carpet in the Metropolitan Museum of Art has a knot density of 2,516 kpsi and a silk Hereke prayer rug (ca. 1970 AD) contains 4,360 symmetric kpsi.[5] However, the rug with the highest knot density is a silk Hereke masterpiece by the Özipeks workshops, having an incredible density of approximately 10,000 kpsi, with a production time of about 15 years. (FN5a - https://new.liveauctioneers.com/item/53198792_probably-the-finest-rug-in-the-world-silk-hereke)
In Persian, reg (raj, rag, Persian: "row, course") refers to the knots per gereh (Persian: "knot"), which refers to a unit of approximately 2.75 inches (7.0 cm).[5] Dihari is a unit of 6,000 knots used to measure production in India.
Silk carpets are perhaps the most sought after varieties of Oriental rugs when it comes to sprucing up a home, mainly due to the glowing graceful touch they can add to any space. Silk carpets are cherished for their fine, smooth texture and colorful patterns. Contrary to belief, silk carpets are not as delicate as one would think; rather, they are very durable.
Maintaining the fine texture of a silk rug without the help of a professional can be quite a feat: because of their fine, silk material, they can be damaged.
To ensure the safety of your silk rug, it’s best to first learn about what silk carpets actually are (including what they are made of), how many varieties exist and how to assess the care your rug needs.
The silk used to create your carpet consists of natural protein fibers obtained from caterpillar cocoons of the mulberry silkworm.
Why is silk so expensive? Because extracting silk from those little critters is a long, delicate process that requires hard, tedious work. The result is priceless! Silk is a strong, durable fiber which when dyed emits vibrant color & shine that can appear almost translucent. Flatter areas of silk fibers are even known to reflect light at various angles, highlighting its shine & smooth, glossy texture.
The quality of materials used, the techniques employed and the workmanship along with the harmony of colors & patterns are important factors to take in account when one determines a fine silk rug.
Carpets are often named after the region where they are created.
Turkish Silk Rugs: When buying a Turkish silk area rug, look for dealers who describe these rugs as Ipek Kayseri, Ipek Hereke or Ipek Bursa. Ipek means silk in Turkish. Kayseri, Hereke and Bursa are the only three regions in Turkey where 100% pure silk rugs are woven.
Bursa is the only place in turkey which pure silk is produced. If your dealer is knowledgeable about this referring to Turkish silk, you are getting what you’re in the market for: a genuine, Turkish silk rug.
Persian Silk Rugs: Qum and Kashan are cities in Iran where Persian silk rugs are made. Pure Persian silk rugs are named Qum Kashans.
Uzbek Silk Rugs: For pure silk carpets that were made in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, look for the term “Shovi”. This refers to carpets that are made purely out of silk.
Chinese Silk Rugs: Nan Yang Chinese silk carpets are famous for their high quality, lustrous shine, and knot density. Nan Yang is a region in China where close to 80% of handmade Chinese silk rugs are made. Shanghai is also famous for its silk carpets. Again, this is knowledge your dealer should know – and school you about – prior to selling you a Chinese silk rug!
Oriental Silk Rugs have three main layouts (although this is a lot of info to take in, a quick glance may give you a better idea of what you are looking for and what will best complement your home):
Allover: An allover design consists of one or several designs which are repeated throughout the whole carpet, without a design central.
Medallion: Unlike an allover design, a medallion layout consists of symmetrical designs which are oval, octagonal, hexagonal or star like. That design is used as a central focal point on the rug. Another word for the medallion layout is the book cover or Koran layout as these patterns have been inspired by the intricate designs on the cover of the Koran.
One sided: The unique layout of a one-sided design consists of patterns that are woven in a single direction. This type of rug is best viewed from one angle. Most one sided rugs portray scenes of people and/or animals, making it feel more like a precious artifact than just any old rug. These silk carpets can not only be used as elegant floor coverings, but as wall decor tapestries.
You have probably already figured out by now that silk rugs are in such high demand due to their complex details and vibrant threading. Here’s a guide to the most spectacular varieties:
Hereke Turkish: This type of rug is often dense, short piled and designed with floral motifs such as roses, tulips, spring blossoms, pine cones and stars.
Kayseri Turkish: While this variety is dense, too, it is, unlike the Hereke, long piled. Similar to the Hereke rugs, they are adorned with natural cultural motifs, religious symbols, 1001 nights, and the tree of life.
Qum Kashan Persian: This Qum Kashan comes in classical medallion designs. Kashan refers to a medallion layout weaved a top a Shah Abbas field. What does that mean? That the design will woo you with curvilinear forms throughout the entire background of the rug. The colors used in Persian silk rugs are red, yellow, ivory and orange tones.
Chinese silk rugs: Everybody loves a beautiful Chinese silk rug. But not a lot of people are sure about what makes them so intriguing. Here may be why: In most Chinese area rugs, Buddhist and Taoist religions are the star of the show. Symbols like the “Yin and Yang” and the “Shou” represent health and longevity. Peony and plum flowers symbolize prosperity and wealth. Bamboo designs represent durability. Dragons symbolize power and Phoenix motifs represent immortality. While this may seem far fetched from Middle Eastern tradition inspired rugs, Iranian and Turkish designs have become quite popular in the Chinese silk rug industry.
Knot Density: The quality of an Oriental rug – and all silk rugs in general, is determined by a most important factor: the rug’s knot density. As a rule of thumb: a high knot count equals higher durability, stronger strength and therefore the ability to maintain its intricate design. The best way to determine a rug’s knot density is to figure out the rug’s KPSI (Knots Per Square Inch), or the KPSC (Knots Per Square Centimeter).
How to Figure Out Your Rug’s KPSC? Simply use a measuring tape and multiply the number of knots along 1-inch, width wise with the number of knots along 1-inch lengthwise. That will determine the number of knots per square inch.
CAVEAT: you should not use this formula as the ONLY criteria to determine whether a rug merits your investment!!! Knot density can change from one rug or material to another, but this is a starter for any novice rug buyer. You should also take into consideration the different knot techniques that can go into composing a rug. For instance, some knots can look as though they are two knots. Meaning you will end up paying twice as much as you bargained for.
A rule of thumb: a good silk rug should have more than 600 KPSI or 100 KPSC.
Pile: pure silk rugs are close clipped, low piled, dense and thinner than wool rugs.
Fringes: Look at the fringes. Silk rugs must have silk extensions as the structure of the rug is made out of silk. In hand woven silk rugs, fringes are part of the rug’s structure.
A carpet is a textile floor covering typically consisting of an upper layer of pile attached to a backing. The pile was traditionally made from wool, but since the 20th century, synthetic fibers such as polypropylene, nylon or polyester are often used, as these fibers are less expensive than wool. The pile usually consists of twisted tufts that are typically heat-treated to maintain their structure. The term carpet is often used in a similar context to the term rug, but rugs are typically considered to be smaller than a room and not attached to the floor.
Turkish woolen carpet
Carpets are used for a variety of purposes, including insulating a person's feet from a cold tile or concrete floor, making a room more comfortable as a place to sit on the floor (e.g., when playing with children or as a prayer rug), reducing sound from walking (particularly in apartment buildings), and adding decoration or color to a room. Carpets can be made in any color by using differently dyed fibers. Carpets can have many different types of patterns and motifs used to decorate the surface. Carpets are used in industrial and commercial establishments such as retail stores and hotels and in private homes. Today, a huge range of carpets and rugs are available at many price and quality levels, ranging from inexpensive, synthetic carpets that are mass-produced in factories and used in commercial buildings to costly hand-knotted wool rugs that are used in private homes and houses.
Carpets can be produced on a loom quite similarly to woven fabric, made using needle felts, knotted by hand (in oriental rugs), made with their pile injected into a backing material (called tufting), flatwoven, made by hooking wool or cotton through the meshes of a sturdy fabric, or embroidered. Carpet is commonly made in widths of 12 feet (3.7 m) and 15 feet (4.6 m) in the US and 4 m (13 ft) and 5 m (16 ft) in Europe. Since the 19th and 20th century, where necessary for wall-to-wall carpet, different widths of carpet can be seamed together with a seaming iron and seam tape (formerly it was sewn together) and fixed to a floor over a cushioned underlay (pad) using nails, tack strips (known in the UK as gripper rods), adhesives, or occasionally decorative metal stair rods. Wall-to-wall carpet is distinguished from rugs or mats, which are loose-laid floor coverings, as wall-to-wall carpet is fixed to the floor and covers a much larger area.
The term carpet comes from Old French carpite. One derivation of the term states that the French term came from the Old Italian carpita, from the verb "carpire" meaning to pluck.[1][2] The Online Etymology Dictionary states that the term "carpet" was first used in English in the late 13th century, with the meaning "coarse cloth", and by the mid-14th century, "tablecloth, [or] bedspread".[3] The Online Etymology Dictionary states that the term comes "...from Old French carpite "heavy decorated cloth, carpet," from Medieval Latin or Old Italian carpita "thick woolen cloth," probably from Latin carpere "to card, pluck," probably so called because it was made from unraveled, shred[d]ed, "plucked" fabric".[3] The meaning of the term "carpet" shifted in the 15th century to refer to floor coverings.[3]
The term "carpet" is often used interchangeably with the term "rug". Some sources define a carpet as stretching from wall to wall.[4] Another definition treats rugs as of lower quality or of smaller size, with carpets quite often having finished ends. A third common definition is that a carpet is permanently fixed in place while a rug is simply laid out on the floor. Historically, the term "carpet" was also applied to table and wall coverings, as carpets were not commonly used on the floor in European interiors until the 15th century.
The term "rug" was first used in English in the 1550s, with the meaning "coarse fabric". The term is of "...Scandinavian origin; compare Norwegian dialectal rugga "coarse coverlet," from Old Norse rogg "shaggy tuft," from Proto-Germanic *rawwa-, perhaps related to rag (n.) and rough (adj.)."[5] The meaning of "rug" "...evolved to "coverlet, wrap" (1590s), then "mat for the floor" (1808)".
The carpet is produced on a loom quite similar to woven fabric. The pile can be plush or Berber. Plush carpet is a cut pile and Berber carpet is a loop pile. There are new styles of carpet combining the two styles called cut and loop carpeting. Normally many colored yarns are used and this process is capable of producing intricate patterns from predetermined designs (although some limitations apply to certain weaving methods with regard to accuracy of pattern within the carpet). These carpets are usually the most expensive due to the relatively slow speed of the manufacturing process. These are very famous in Turkey, Iran, India, Pakistan, and Arabia.
These carpets are more technologically advanced. Needle felts are produced by intermingling and felting individual synthetic fibers using barbed and forked needles forming an extremely durable carpet. These carpets are normally found in commercial settings such as hotels and restaurants where there is frequent traffic.
On a knotted pile carpet (formally, a "supplementary weft cut-loop pile" carpet), the structural weft threads alternate with a supplementary weft that rises at right angles to the surface of the weave. This supplementary weft is attached to the warp by one of three knot types (see below), such as shag carpet which was popular in the 1970s, to form the pile or nap of the carpet. Knotting by hand is most prevalent in oriental rugs and carpets. Kashmir carpets are also hand-knotted. Pile carpets, like flat carpets, can be woven on a loom. Both vertical and horizontal looms have been used in the production of European and oriental carpets. The warp threads are set up on the frame of the loom before weaving begins. A number of weavers may work together on the same carpet. A row of knots is completed and cut. The knots are secured with (usually one to four) rows of weft. The warp in woven carpet is usually cotton and the weft is jute.[citation needed]
There are several styles of knotting, but the two main types of knot are the symmetrical (also called Turkish or Ghiordes) and asymmetrical (also called Persian or Senna). Contemporary centres of knotted carpet production are: Lahore and Peshawar (Pakistan), Kashmir (India), Mirzapur and Bhadohi (India),[6]Tabriz (Iran), Afghanistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Turkey, Northern Africa, Nepal, Spain, Turkmenistan, and Tibet. The importance of carpets in the culture of Turkmenistan is such that the national flag features a vertical red stripe near the hoist side, containing five carpet guls (designs used in producing rugs). Kashmir is known for handknotted carpets of silk or wool.
These are carpets that have their pile injected into a backing material, which is itself then bonded to a secondary backing made of a woven hessian weave or a man made alternative to provide stability. The pile is often sheared in order to achieve different textures. This is the most common method of manufacturing of domestic carpets for floor covering purposes in the world.
A flatweave carpet is created by interlocking warp (vertical) and weft (horizontal) threads. Types of oriental flatwoven carpet include kilim, soumak, plain weave, and tapestry weave. Types of European flatwoven carpets include Venetian, Dutch, damask, list, haircloth, and ingrain (aka double cloth, two-ply, triple cloth, or three-ply).
A hooked rug is a simple type of rug handmade by pulling strips of cloth such as wool or cotton through the meshes of a sturdy fabric such as burlap. This type of rug is now generally made as a handicraft. The process of creating a hooked rug is called Rug hooking.[7]
Unlike woven carpets, embroidery carpets' are not formed on a loom. Their pattern is established by the application of stitches to a cloth (often linen) base. The tent stitch and the cross stitch are two of the most common. Embroidered carpets were traditionally made by royal and aristocratic women in the home, but there has been some commercial manufacture since steel needles were introduced (earlier needles were made of bone) and linen weaving improved in the 16th century. Mary, Queen of Scots, is known to have been an avid embroiderer. 16th century designs usually involve scrolling vines and regional flowers (for example, the Bradford carpet). They often incorporate animal heraldry and the coat of arms of the maker. Production continued through the 19th century. Victorian embroidered carpet compositions include highly illusionistic, 3-dimensional flowers. Patterns for tiled carpets made of a number of squares, called Berlin wool work, were introduced in Germany in 1804, and became extremely popular in England in the 1830s. Embroidered carpets can also include other features such as a pattern of shapes, or they can even tell a story.
Carpet can be formulated from many single or blended natural and synthetic fibres. Fibres are chosen for durability, appearance, ease of manufacture, and cost. In terms of scale of production, the dominant yarn constructions are polyamides (nylons) and polypropylene with an estimated 90% of the commercial market.
Since the 20th century, nylon is one of the most common materials for the construction of carpets. Both nylon 6 and nylon 6-6 are used. Nylon can be dyed topically or dyed in a molten state (solution dying). Nylon can be printed easily and has excellent wear characteristics. Due to nylon's excellent wear-resistance, it is widely used in industrial and commercial carpeting. In carpets, nylon tends to stain easily due to the presence of dye sites. These dye sites need to be filled in order to give nylon carpet any type of stain resistance. As nylon is petroleum-based it varies in price with the price of oil.
Polypropylene, a polyolefin stiffer than the cheaper polyethylene, is used to produce carpet yarns because it is still less expensive than the other materials used for carpets. It is difficult to dye and does not wear as well as wool or nylon. Polypropylene, sometimes referred to simply as "olefin", is commonly used to construct berber carpets. Large looped olefin berber carpets are usually only suited for light domestic use and tend to mat down quickly. Berber carpets with smaller loops tend to be more resilient and retain their new appearance longer than large looped berber styles. Commercial grade level-loop carpets have very small loops, and commercial grade cut-pile styles can be well constructed. When made with polypropylene, commercial grade styles wear very well, making them very suitable for areas with heavy foot traffic such as offices. Polypropylene carpets are known to have good stain resistance, but not against oil- based agents. If a stain does set, it can be difficult to clean. Commercial grade carpets can be glued directly to the floor or installed over a 1/4" thick, 8-pound density padding. Outdoor grass carpets are usually made from polypropylene.
Wool has excellent durability, can be dyed easily and is fairly abundant. When blended with synthetic fibres such as nylon the durability of wool is increased. Blended wool yarns are extensively used in production of modern carpet, with the most common blend being 80% wool to 20% synthetic fibre, giving rise to the term "80/20". Wool is relatively expensive and consequently it only comprises a small portion of the market.
The polyester known as "PET" (polyethylene terephthalate) is used in carpet manufacturing in both spun and filament constructions. After the price of raw materials for many types of carpet rose in the early 2000s, polyester became more competitive. Polyester has good physical properties and is inherently stain-resistant because it is hydrophobic, however oil based stains can pose a problem for this type of material and it can be prone to soiling. Similar to nylon, colour can be added after production or it can be infused in a molten state (solution dyeing). Polyester has the disadvantage that it tends to crush or mat down easily. It is typically used in mid- to low-priced carpeting.
Another polyester, "PTT" (Polytrimethylene terephthalate), also called Sorona or 3GT (Dupont) or Corterra (Shell), is a variant of PET. Lurgi Zimmer PTT was first patented in 1941, but it was not produced until the 1990s, when Shell Chemicals developed the low-cost method of producing high-quality 1,3 propanediol (PDO), the starting raw material for PTT Corterra Polymers. DuPont subsequently commercialized a biological process for making 1,3-propanediol from corn syrup, imparting significant renewable content on the corresponding Sorona polyester carpet fibers.[9] These carpet fibers have resiliency comparable to nylon.
Acrylic is a synthetic material first created by the Dupont Corporation in 1941 but has gone through various changes since it was first introduced. In the past, acrylic carpet used to fuzz or "pill" easily. This happened when the fibres degraded over time and short strands broke away with contact or friction. Over the years, new types of acrylics have been developed to alleviate some of these problems, although the issues have not been completely removed. Acrylic is fairly difficult to dye but is colourfast, washable, and has the feel and appearance of wool, making it a good rug fabric.
The knotted pile carpet probably originated in the Caspian Sea area (Northern Iran) [12] or the Armenian Highland.[13] Although there is evidence of goats and sheep being sheared for wool and hair which was spun and woven as far back at the 7th millennium, the earliest surviving pile carpet is the "Pazyryk carpet", which dates from the 5th-4th century BC. It was excavated by Sergei Ivanovich Rudenko in 1949 from a Pazyryk burial mound in the Altai Mountains in Siberia. This richly coloured carpet is 200 x 183 cm (6'6" x 6'0") and framed by a border of griffins.[14]
Although claimed by many cultures, this square tufted carpet, almost perfectly intact, is considered by many experts to be of Caucasian, specifically Armenian, origin. The rug is woven using the Armenian double knot, and the red filaments' color was made from Armenian cochineal.[15][16] The eminent authority of ancient carpets, Ulrich Schurmann, says of it, "From all the evidence available I am convinced that the Pazyryk rug was a funeral accessory and most likely a masterpiece of Armenian workmanship".[17] Gantzhorn concurs with this thesis. At the ruins of Persepolis in Iran where various nations are depicted as bearing tribute, the horse design from the Pazyryk carpet is the same as the relief depicting part of the Armenian delegation.[13] The historian Herodotus writing in the 5th century BC also informs us that the inhabitants of the Caucasus wove beautiful rugs with brilliant colors which would never fade.
Afghan rug -
There has recently been a surge in demand for Afghan carpets, although many Afghan carpet manufacturers market their products under the name of a different country.[19] The carpets are made in Afghanistan, as well as by Afghan refugees who reside in Pakistan and Iran. Famous Afghan rugs include the Shindand or Adraskan (named after local Afghan villages), woven in the Herat area in western Afghanistan.
Afghan carpets are commonly known as Afghan rugs. Afghan carpets are a unique and well recognized handmade material design that originates from Afghanistan. They often exhibit intricate detailing, mainly using traditional tribal designs originating from the Turkmen, Kazakh, Baloch, and Uzbeks. The hand-made rugs come in many patterns and colors, yet the traditional and most common example of Afghan carpet is the octagon-shaped elephant-foot (Bukhara). The rugs with this print are most commonly red in color. Many dyes, such as vegetable dyes, are used to impart rich color.
Various rug fragments have been excavated in Armenia dating back to the 7th century BC or earlier. The oldest, single, surviving knotted carpet in existence is the Pazyryk carpet, excavated from a frozen tomb in Siberia, dated from the 5th to the 3rd century BC, now in the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg. This square tufted carpet, almost perfectly intact, is considered by many experts to be of Caucasian, specifically Armenian, origin. The eminent authority of ancient carpets, Ulrich Schurmann, says of it, "From all the evidence available I am convinced that the Pazyryk rug was a funeral accessory and most likely a masterpiece of Armenian workmanship".[20] Gantzhorn concurs with this thesis. At the ruins of Persepolis in Iran where various nations are depicted as bearing tribute, the horse design from the Pazyryk carpet is the same as the relief depicting part of the Armenian delegation. Armenian carpets were renowned by foreigners who travelled to Artsakh; the Arab geographer and historian Al-Masudi noted that, among other works of art, he had never seen such carpets elsewhere in his life.[21]
Art historian Hravard Hakobyan notes that "Artsakh carpets occupy a special place in the history of Armenian carpet-making."[22] Common themes and patterns found on Armenian carpets were the depiction of dragons and eagles. They were diverse in style, rich in colour and ornamental motifs, and were even separated in categories depending on what sort of animals were depicted on them, such as artsvagorgs (eagle-carpets), vishapagorgs (dragon-carpets) and otsagorgs (serpent-carpets).[22] The rug mentioned in the Kaptavan inscriptions is composed of three arches, "covered with vegatative ornaments", and bears an artistic resemblance to the illuminated manuscripts produced in Artsakh.[22]
The art of carpet weaving was in addition intimately connected to the making of curtains as evidenced in a passage by Kirakos Gandzaketsi, a 13th-century Armenian historian from Artsakh, who praised Arzu-Khatun, the wife of regional prince Vakhtang Khachenatsi, and her daughters for their expertise and skill in weaving.
The Gultapin excavations discovered several carpet weaving tools which date back to the 4th-3rd millennium BC. According to Iranica Online "The main weaving zone was in the eastern Transcaucasus south of the mountains that bisect the region diagonally, the area now comprised in the Azerbaijan SSR; it is the homeland of a Turkic population known today as Azeri. Other ethnic groups also practiced weaving, some of them in other parts of the Caucasus, but they were of lesser importance."[24] Azerbaijan was one of the most important centers of carpet weaving and as a result of that, several different schools have evolved. While traditionally schools are divided into four main branches, each region has its own version of the carpets. The Schools are divided into four main branches: Kuba-Shirvan, Ganja-Kazakh carpet-weaving school, The Baku carpet school, Karabakh school of carpet weaving.[25] Carpet weaving is a family tradition in Azerbaijan which is transferred verbally and with practicing and also associated with the daily life and customs of its people. A variety of carpet and rug types are made in Azerbaijan such as silk, wool, gold and silver threads, pile and pileless carpets, as well as, kilim, sumakh, zili, verni, mafrashi and khurjun. In 2010, traditional art of Azerbaijani carpet weaving was added to the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity of UNESCO.
As opposed to most antique rug manufactory practices, Chinese carpets were woven almost exclusively for internal consumption. China has a long history of exporting traditional goods; however, it was not until the first half of the 19th century that the Chinese began to export their rugs. Once in contact with western influences, there was a large change in production: Chinese manufactories began to produce art-deco rugs with commercial look and price point. The centuries-old Chinese textile industry is rich in history. While most antique carpets are classified according to a specific region or manufactory, scholars attribute the age of any specific Chinese rug to the ruling emperor of the time. The earliest surviving examples of the craft were produced during the time of Ch'ung Chen, the last emperor of the Chen Dynasty.
Carpet weaving may have been introduced into the area as far back as the eleventh century with the coming of the first Muslim conquerors, the Ghaznavids and the Ghauris, from the West. It can with more certainty be traced to the beginning of the Mughal dynasty in the early sixteenth century, when the last successor of Timur, Babar, extended his rule from Kabul to India to found the Mughal Empire. Under the patronage of the Mughals, Indian craftsmen adopted Persian techniques and designs. Carpets woven in the Punjab made use of motifs and decorative styles found in Mughal architecture.
Akbar, a Mogul emperor, is accredited to introducing the art of carpet weaving to India during his reign. The Mughal emperors patronized Persian carpets for their royal courts and palaces. During this period, he brought Persian craftsmen from their homeland and established them in India. Initially, these Mughal carpets showed the classic Persian style of fine knotting, then gradually the style blended with Indian art. Thus the carpets produced became typical of Indian origin and the industry began to diversify and spread all over the subcontinent. During the Mughal period, carpets made on the Indian subcontinent became so famous that demand for them spread abroad. These carpets had distinctive designs and boasted a high density of knots. Carpets made for the Mughal emperors, including Jahangir and Shah Jahan, were of the finest quality. Under Shah Jahan's reign, Mughal carpet weaving took on a new aesthetic and entered its classical phase.[citation needed] Indian carpets are well known for their designs with attention to detail and presentation of realistic attributes. The carpet industry in India flourished more in its northern part with major centres found in Kashmir, Jaipur, Agra and Bhadohi.
Indian carpets are known for their high density of knotting. Hand-knotted carpets are a speciality and widely in demand in the West. The carpet industry in India has been successful in establishing social business models that help underprivileged sections of the society. Notable examples of social entrepreneurship ventures are Jaipur rugs[28] and the Fabindia retail chain.[29]
Another category of Indian rugs which, though quite popular in most western countries, have not received much press, is hand-woven rugs of Khairabad (Citapore rugs).[citation needed] Khairabad, a small town in the Citapore (now spelled as "Sitapur") district of India had been ruled by Raja Mehmoodabad. Khairabad (Mehmoodabad Estate) was part of Oudh province which had been ruled by shi'i Muslims having Persian linkages. Citapore rugs made in Khairabad and neighbouring areas are hand-woven and distinct from tufted and knotted rugs. Flat weave is the basic weaving technique of Citapore rugs and generally cotton is the main weaving material here but jute, rayon and chenille are also popular. IKEA and Agocha have been major buyers of rugs from this area.
The art of weaving developed in South Asia at a time when few other civilizations employed it. Excavations at Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro– ancient cities of the Indus Valley Civilization– have established that the inhabitants used spindles and spun a wide variety of weaving materials. Some historians consider that the Indus Valley civilization first developed the use of woven textiles. As of the late 1990s, hand-knotted carpets were among Pakistan's leading export products and their manufacture is the second largest cottage and small industry. Pakistani craftsmen have the capacity to produce any type of carpet using all the popular motifs of gulls, medallions, paisleys, traceries, and geometric designs in various combinations.[30] At the time of independence, manufacturing of carpets was set up in Sangla Hill, a small town of District Sheikhupura. Chaudary Mukhtar Ahmad Member son of Maher Ganda introduced and taught this art to locals and immigrants. He is considered founder of this industry in Pakistan. Sangla Hill is now a focal point of the carpet industry in Pakistan. Almost all the exporters and manufacturers who are running their business at Lahore, Faisalabad and Karachi have their area offices in Sangla Hill.
The Persian carpet is a part of Persian (Iranian) art and culture. Carpet-weaving in Persia dates back to the Bronze Age. The earliest surviving corpus of Persian carpets come from the Safavid dynasty (1501–1736) in the 16th century. However, painted depictions prove a longer history of production. There is much variety among classical Persian carpets of the 16th and 17th century. Common motifs include scrolling vine networks, arabesques, palmettes, cloud bands, medallions, and overlapping geometric compartments rather than animals and humans.[citation needed] This is because Islam, the dominant religion in that part of the world, forbids their depiction.[citation needed] Still, some show figures engaged either in the hunt or feasting scenes. The majority of these carpets are wool, but several silk examples produced in Kashan survive.[31]
Iran is also the world's largest producer and exporter of handmade carpets, producing three quarters of the world's total output and having a share of 30% of world's export markets.[32][33] Iran is also the maker of the largest handmade carpet in history, measuring 60,546 square feet (equal to over 5600 square meters).
Scandinavian rugs are among the most popular of all weaves in modern design. Preferred by influential modernist thinkers, designers, and advocates for a new aesthetic in the mid-twentieth century, Scandinavian rugs have become very widespread in many different avenues of contemporary interior design. With a long history of adaptation and evolution, the tradition of Scandinavian rug-making is among the most storied of all European rug-making traditions.
Turkish carpets (also known as Anatolian), whether hand knotted or flat woven, are among the most well known and established hand crafted art works in the world.[36] Historically: religious, cultural, environmental, sociopolitical and socioeconomic conditions created widespread utilitarian need and have provided artistic inspiration among the many tribal peoples and ethnic groups in Central Asia and Turkey.[37] Turks; nomadic or pastoral, agrarian or town dwellers, living in tents or in sumptuous houses in large cities, have protected themselves from the extremes of the cold weather by covering the floors, and sometimes walls and doorways, with carpets and rugs. The carpets are always hand made of wool or sometimes cotton, with occasional additions of silk. These carpets are natural barriers against the cold. Turkish pile rugs and kilims are also frequently used as tent decorations, grain bags, camel and donkey bags, ground cushions, oven covers, sofa covers, bed and cushion covers, blankets, curtains, eating blankets, table top spreads, prayer rugs and for ceremonial occasions.
The oldest records of flat woven kilims come from Çatalhöyük Neolithic pottery, circa 7000 B.C. One of the oldest settlements ever to have been discovered, Çatalhöyük is located south east of Konya in the middle of the Anatolian region.[38] The excavations to date (only 3% of the town) not only found carbonized fabric but also fragments of kilims painted on the walls of some of the dwellings. The majority of them represent geometric and stylized forms that are similar or identical to other historical and contemporary designs.[39]
The knotted rug is believed to have reached Asia Minor and the Middle East with the expansion of various nomadic tribes peoples during the latter period of the great Turkic migration of the 8th and 9th centuries. Famously depicted in European paintings of The Renaissance, beautiful Anatolian rugs were often used from then until modern times, to indicate the high economic and social status of the owner.
Women learn their weaving skills at an early age, taking months or even years to complete the beautiful pile rugs and flat woven kilims that were created for their use in every aspect of daily life. As is true in most weaving cultures, traditionally and nearly exclusively, it is women and girls who are both artisan and weaver.
Türkmen carpet (also called "Bukhara Uzbekistan") is a handmade floor-covering textile traditionally originating in Central Asia. It is helpful to distinguish between the original Turkmen tribal rugs and the rugs produced in large numbers for export in the 2000s, mainly in Pakistan and Iran. The authentic Turkmen rugs were created by the Turkmen tribes, who are the leading ethnic group in Turkmenistan and are also found in Afghanistan and Iran. They are used for various purposes, including tent rugs, door hangings, and bags of different sizes.
Men in Uyghur society traditionally did weaving. Scholars speculate that when the Mongols invaded northwest China in the 13th century, under the leadership of General Subutai, they may have taken as captives some of these skilled carpet weavers.
Oriental carpets began to appear in Europe after the Crusades in the 11th century due to contact by Crusaders with Eastern traders. Until the mid-18th century, they were primarily used on walls and tables. Except in royal or ecclesiastical settings, they were considered too precious to cover the floor. Starting in the 13th century, oriental carpets appeared in paintings (notably from Italy, Flanders, England, France, and the Netherlands). Carpets of Indo-Persian design were introduced to Europe via the Dutch, British, and French East India Companies of the 17th and 18th centuries [45] and in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth by Armenian merchants (Polish carpets or Polonaise carpets).
Although isolated instances of carpet production pre-date the Muslim invasion of Spain, the Hispano-Moresque examples are the earliest significant body of European-made carpets. Documentary evidence shows production began in Spain as early as the 10th century A.D. The earliest extant Spanish carpet, the so-called Synagogue carpet in the Museum of Islamic Art, Berlin, is a unique survival dated to the 14th century. The earliest group of Hispano-Moresque rugs, Admiral carpets (also known as armorial carpets), has an all-over geometric, repeat pattern punctuated by blazons of noble, Christian Spanish families. The variety of this design was analyzed most thoroughly by May Beattie. Many 15th-century Spanish carpets rely heavily on designs originally developed on the Anatolian Peninsula.[citation needed] Carpet production continued after the Reconquest of Spain and the eventual expulsion of the Muslim population in the 15th century. 16th-century Renaissance Spanish carpet design is a derivative of silk textile design. The most popular motifs are wreaths, acanthus leaves, and pomegranates.
During the Moorish (Muslim) period, production took place in Alcaraz in the province of Albacete and was recorded in other towns. Carpet production after the Christian reconquest continued in Alcaraz, while Cuenca, first recorded as a weaving center in the 12th century, became increasingly important and was dominant in the 17th and early 18th centuries. Carpets of entirely different French-based designs began to be woven in a royal workshop, the Royal Tapestry Factory (Real Fábrica de Tapices de Santa Bárbara) in Madrid in the 18th century. Cuenca was closed down by the royal degree of Carlos IV in the late 18th century to stop it from competing with the new workshop. Madrid continued as a weaving center through to the 20th century, producing brightly colored carpets. Most of whose designs are strongly influenced by French carpet design and frequently signed (on occasions with the monogram M.D.; also sometimes with the name Stuyck) and dated in the outer stripe. After the Spanish civil war, General Franco revived the carpet weaving industry in workshops named after him, weaving designs influenced by earlier Spanish carpets, usually in a minimal range of colors.
Refers to a variety of flat tapestry-woven carpets or rugs traditionally produced in Pirot, a town in south-eastern Serbia. Pirot kilims with some 122 ornaments and 96 different types have been protected by geographical indication in 2002. They are one of the most important traditional handicrafts in Serbia. In the late 19th century and up to the Second World War, Pirot kilims have been frequently used as insignia of Serbian and Yugoslav royalty. This tradition was revived in 2011 when Pirot kilims were reintroduced for state ceremonies in Serbia. Carpet weaving in Pirot dates back to the Middle Ages.[47][full citation needed] One of the first mentions of the Pirot kilim in written sources dated 1565, when it was said that the šajkaši boats on the Danube and Drava were covered with Pirot kilims. Pirot was once the most critical rug-making center in the Balkans. Pirot is located on the main historical highway that linked central Europe with Constantinople. Pirot was also known as Şarköy in Turkish. The Pirot carpet varieties are also found in Bulgaria, Turkey, and many other international collections. One of the top qualities is the color effects achieved through the choice and arrangement of colors.
At the beginning of the 19th-century, plant dyes were replaced by aniline colorings. "The best product in the country is the Pirot carpet, worth about ten shillings a square meter. The designs are stunning, and the rugs, without being so heavy as the Persian or so ragged and scant in the web and weft as Caramanian, wear forever. The manufacture of these is almost entirely confined to Pirot. From Pilot's old Turkish signification as Şarköy stems the traditional trade name of the rugs as Şarköy-kilims. Arising from the homonym to the today's Turkish settlement of Şarköy in Thracia, which had no established rug-making tradition, Şarköys are often falsely ascribed to originate from Turkey. Also, in the rug selling industry, Şarköy is mainly labeled as oriental or Turkish origin to sell them to non-familiar customers quickly. They prefer carpets with putative oriental origin. Şarköys were established in the 17th century in the region of the Western Balkan or Stara Planina mountains in the towns of Pirot, Berkowiza, Lom, Chiprovtsi, and Samokov. Later they have also been produced in Knjaževac and Caribrod.
The Chiprovtsi carpet (Чипровци килим) is a type of handmade carpet with two identical sides, part of Bulgarian national heritage, traditions, arts, and crafts. Its name is derived from the town of Chiprovtsi, where its production started in the 17th century. The carpet weaving industry played a crucial role in the revival of Chiprovtsi in the 1720s after the devastation of the failed 1688 Chiprovtsi Uprising against Ottoman rule. The western traveler Ami Boué, who visited Chiprovtsi in 1836–1838, reported that "mainly young girls, under shelters or in corridors, engage in carpet weaving. They earn only five francs a month, and the payment was even lower before". By 1868, the annual production of carpets in Chiprovtsi had surpassed 14,000 square meters.[48][full citation needed] In 1896, almost 1,400 women from Chiprovtsi and the region were engaged in carpet weaving. In 1920, the locals founded the Manual Labour carpet-weaving cooperative society, the first of its kind in the country.[49][full citation needed] At present. the carpet (kilim) industry remains dominant in the town.[50] Carpets have been crafted according to traditional designs, but it has been up to the customers to decide the rug pattern they have ordered in recent years. The production of a single three by 4 m (9.8 by 13.1 ft) carpet takes about 50 days; primarily, women engage in carpet weaving. Work is entirely manual, and all used materials are natural; the primary material is wool, colored using plant or mineral dyes. The local carpets have been prized at London, Paris, Liège, and Brussels exhibitions. However, the Chiprovtsi carpet industry has declined in recent decades as it has lost its firm in foreign markets. As a result, the town and the municipality have been experiencing a demographic crisis.
In 1608 Henry IV initiated the French production of "Turkish style" carpets under the direction of Pierre DuPont. This production was soon moved to the Savonnerie factory in Chaillot just west of Paris. The earliest well-known group produced by the Savonnerie, then under the direction of Simon Lourdes, are the carpets made in the early years of Louis XIV's reign. They are densely ornamented with flowers, sometimes in vases or baskets, against dark blue or brown grounds in deep borders. The designs are based on Netherlandish and Flemish textiles and paintings. The most famous Savonnerie carpets are the series made for the Grande Galerie and the Galerie d'Apollon in the Palais du Louvre between c. 1665-and 1685. These 105 masterpieces, made under the artistic direction of Charles Le Brun, were never installed as Louis XIV moved the court to Versailles in 1688. Their design combines rich acanthus leaves, architectural framing, and mythological scenes (inspired by Cesare Ripa's Iconology) with emblems of Louis XIV's royal power.
Pierre-Josse Joseph Perrot is the best-known of the mid-eighteenth-century carpet designers. His many surviving works and drawings display graceful rococo s-scrolls, central rosettes, shells, acanthus leaves, and floral swags. The Savonnerie manufactory was moved to the Gobelins in Paris in 1826.[51] The Beauvais manufactory, better known for their tapestry, also made knotted pile carpets from 1780 to 1792. Carpet production in small, privately owned workshops in the town of Aubusson began in 1743. Carpets produced in France employ the symmetrical knot.
Knotted pile carpet weaving technology probably came to England in the early 16th century with Flemish Calvinists fleeing religious persecution. Because many of these weavers settled in south-eastern England, particularly in Norwich, the 14 extant 16th and 17th-century carpets are sometimes referred to as "Norwich carpets." These works are either adaptations of Anatolian or Indo-Persian designs or employ Elizabethan-Jacobean scrolling vines and blossoms; all but one are dated or bear a coat of arms. Like the French, English weavers used the symmetrical knot. There are documented and surviving examples of carpets from three 18th-century manufactories: Exeter (1756–1761, owned by Claude Passavant, three extant carpets), Moorfields (1752–1806, owned by Thomas Moore, five alive), and Axminster (1755–1835, owned by Thomas Whitty, numerous extant).
Exeter and Moorfields were both staffed with renegade weavers from the French Savonnerie and, therefore, employ the weaving structure of that factory and Perrot-inspired designs. Neoclassical designer Robert Adam supplied designs for both Moorfields and Axminster carpets based on Roman floor mosaics and coffered ceilings. His design's most well-known rugs were made for Syon House, Osterley House, Harewood House, Saltram House, and Newby Hall.
Axminster carpet was a unique floor covering first made in a factory founded at Axminster, Devon, in 1755 by the cloth weaver Thomas Whitty. Resembling somewhat the Savonnerie carpets produced in France, Axminster carpets were symmetrically knotted by hand in wool on woolen warps and had a weft of flax or hemp. Like the French carpets, they often featured Renaissance architectural or floral patterns; others mimicked oriental patterns. Similar carpets were produced simultaneously in Exeter and the Moorfields area of London and, shortly before, at Fulham in Middlesex. The Whitty factory closed in 1835 with the advent of machine-made carpeting. However, the name Axminster survived as a generic term for machine-made carpets whose pile is produced by techniques similar to those used to make velvet or chenille [52]. Axminster Carpets Ltd resumed production at a new site in 1937.[53]
Axminster carpets can use the three main types of broadloom carpet construction: machine-woven, tufted and hand-knotted. Machine-woven carpet is an investment that will last 20 or 30 years, and woven Axminster and Wilton carpets are still prevalent in areas where longevity and design flexibility are a big part of the purchasing decision. Hotels and leisure venues almost always choose these types, and many homes use woven Axminsters as design statements.
Machine-woven carpets like Axminster and Wilton are made by massive looms that weave together 'bobbins' of carpet yarn and backing. The finished result, which can be intricately patterned, creates a floor that provides supreme underfoot luxury with high performance. Tufted carpets are also famous in the home. They are relatively speedy to make: a pre-woven backing has yarns tufted into it. Needles push the thread through the license, held in place with underlying "loopers." Tufted carpets can be twist piles, velvet, or loop pile. Twist pile carpets are produced when one or more fibers are twisted in the tufting process so that they appear to be bound together in the finished carpet. Velvet pile carpets tend to have a shorter pile and a tighter construction, giving the finished article a smooth, velvety appearance. Loop pile carpets are renowned for being hard-wearing and lend carpets great texture. The traditional domain of rugs from far away continents, hand knotted squares, and rugs use the expertise of weavers to produce work of the finest quality. Standard mats often feature a deliberate mistake on behalf of the weaver to guarantee their authenticity.
Six patterns of Axminster carpet are known as the Lansdowne group. These have a tripartite design with reeded circles and baskets of flowers in the central panel, flanked by diamond lozenges in the side panels. Axminster Rococo designs often have a brown ground and include birds copied from famous, contemporary engravings. Even now, a large percentage of the 55,000 population of the town still seek employment in this industry.
The town of Wilton, Wiltshire, is also known for its carpet weaving, which dates back to the 18th century.[54]
The Brussels loom was introduced into England towards the middle of the eighteenth century and marked the beginning of a new era in carpet-weaving. It was the first loom on which a pile carpet could be woven mechanically, the pile consisting of rows of loops formed over wires inserted weftwise during weaving and subsequently withdrawn. Brussels was the first type of carpet to be woven in a loom incorporating the Jacquard pattern-selecting mechanism, and in 1849 power was applied to the loom by Biglow in the United States.
Later, when bladed wires were developed, the pile loops were severed on the withdrawal of the wires to produce a carpet known as Wilton, and after this development, the loom became known as the Wilton loom. In modern usage, Wilton's designation applies to both cut-pile and loop-pile carpets made in this loom. The latter is described as Brussels-Wilton, round wire Wilton, loop-pile Wilton, and round wired Jacquard. The methods of manufacture, including the principles of design, preparatory processes, and weaving, are the same in most respects for both Brussels and Wilton qualities. The chief difference between them is that whereas the Brussels loop-pile is secured satisfactorily by the insertion of two picks of weft to each wire (2-shot), the Wilton cut-pile is woven more often with three choices of weft to each wire (3-shot) to ensure that the tufts are firmly secured in the carpet backing.
Brussels carpets have a smooth, slightly ribbed surface, and their patterning is well defined, a characteristic feature of the rug. The closeness of pile rather than height contributes to their neat appearance and hard-wearing properties, although they do not simulate the luxury of cut-pile carpets. Brussels Wilton carpets were initially produced on 27-inch (3/4) looms and were sewn together. The looms could incorporate up to five frames, each different color, thus enabling figured or pattern carpets to be manufactured. With judicial and skillful planting of colors in the frames, the number of colors could be increased to about twenty, enabling complex designs to be produced. Due to the additional costs in labor, these carpets were typically only made for the bespoke market.
After the First World War, the carpets started to be produced for the general market using popular designs and colorways. Still, they always remained at the luxury end of the public market. The growing middle class of the twentieth century aspired to acquire a Wilton carpet for their 'best' room. Despite the impact of industrialization, the areas where Brussels Wilton carpets were produced remained centered around the towns of Wilton, Kidderminster in the West Midlands, and in West Yorkshire, where the firm of John Crossley and Sons in Halifax became synonymous with carpet manufacture. There were smaller areas of manufacturing in Scotland and Durham. With the development of different manufacturing methods and looms capable of the mass production of carpets, the public began to change their décor, including rugs, regularly, which increased the demand for carpets. The last quarter of the 20th century saw the rapid decline of the labor-intensive Brussels Wilton carpets. Very few of the original ¾ Wilton looms still exist, and the few that do are either in museums or used by small manufacturers that continue to produce custom-made luxury carpets for the elite and replace carpets in historic buildings in the U.K. and abroad.
Carpet is commonly made in widths of 12 feet (3.7 m) and 15 feet (4.6 m) in the U.S., 4 m, and 5 m in Europe. Where different necessary widths can be seamed together with a seaming iron and seam tape (formerly it was sewn together), and it is fixed to a floor over a cushioned underlay (pad) using nails, tack strips (known in the U.K. as gripper rods), adhesives, or occasionally decorative metal stair rods, thus distinguishing it from rugs or mats, which are loose-laid floor coverings. Wool, natural bindings, padding, and formaldehyde-free glues are becoming more common for environmental reasons. These options are almost always at a premium cost.
In the U.K., some carpets are still manufactured for yachts, hotels, pubs, and clubs in a narrow width of 27 inches (0.69 m) and then sewn to size. Carpeting that covers an entire room area is loosely referred to as 'wall-to-wall.' Still, carpet can be installed over any portion thereof using appropriate transition moldings where the carpet meets other floor coverings. Carpeting is more than just a single item; it is a system comprising the carpet itself, the carpet backing (often made of latex), the cushioning underlay, and a method of installation. Carpet tiles are also available, typically 50 centimeters (20 in) square. These are usually only used in commercial settings and are affixed using a special pressure-sensitive glue, which holds them while allowing easy removal (in an office environment, for example) or allowing rearrangement to spread wear.[56]
Commercial carpet cleaning for yachts, hotels, pubs, and clubs is also a significant industry. Rates for cleaning vary, with hotel restaurants being on the highest end due to the frequency of traffic and staining. In such environments, clean flooring is essential from both a pest extermination and public health liability standpoint and maintains the establishment's overall look and customer satisfaction. Given the importance of upkeep, it is customary in full-service hotels with onsite food and beverage outlets for the commercial carpet cleaner to be extended privileges as the "lord of the inn," such as on the house upgraded accommodations, personal chef services, in-room entertainment, and ability to pay gratuity on hotel house accounts.[57]
"Carpet binding" is a term used for any material applied to the edge of a carpet to make a rug. Carpet binding is usually cotton or nylon and comes in many other materials such as leather. Non-synthetic binding is frequently used with bamboo, grass, and wool rugs but is often used with carpets made from different materials.
The GoodWeave labeling scheme used throughout Europe and North America assures that child labor has not been used: importers pay for the labels, and the revenue collected is used to monitor production centers and educate previously exploited children.
For the year 2018 in the U.S., the recycling of carpet fiber, backing, and padding was 310,000 tons, which was 9.2 percent of carpet generation. A slightly more significant proportion (17.8 percent) was combusted for energy recovery, while most rugs and carpets were landfilled (73 percent).
There are many stories about magic carpets and legendary flying carpets that can be used to transport people who are on them instantaneously or quickly to their destination. Disney's Aladdin depicts a magic carpet found by Aladdin and Abu in the Cave of Wonders while trying to find Genie's lamp. Aladdin and Jasmine ride on him to go on a ride around the world. The term "[m]agic carpet [is] first attested [in] 1816. [3] From the 16th century to the 19th century, the term "carpet" was used "...as an adjective often with a tinge of contempt when used of men (as in carpet-knight, the 1570s)", which meant a man who was associated with "...luxury, ladies' boudoirs, and drawing rooms".[3] Rolling out the red carpet is an expression that means to welcome a guest lavishly and handsomely. In some cases, an actual red carpet is used for VIPs and celebrities to walk on, such as at the Cannes Film Festival and when foreign dignitaries are welcomed to a country.
In the 1820s British servant slang, to "carpet" someone means to call them for a reprimand.[3] To be called on the carpet means to be summoned for a serious reason, typically a scolding reprimand; this usage dates from 1900,[60] referring to the carpeted office of a person in authority, such as a schoolmaster or employer. A more potent variant of this expression, to be "hauled on the carpet," implies an even sterner reprimand. Carpet bombing is a type of bombing from airplanes developed in the 20th century in which an entire city is bombed (rather than precise strikes on military targets). The slang expression "laugh at the carpet" means to vomit on the floor (especially a carpeted floor).[61] The word "on the carpet" refers to a matter under discussion or consideration.[61] "carpet muncher" is a derogatory slang term for a lesbian; this expression was first attested in 1992.[62]
The term carpet bag, which refers to a suitcase made from a piece of carpet, is used in several figurative contexts. After the American Civil War, the term gained widespread usage to refer to carpetbaggers, Northerners who moved to the SouthSouth after the war, especially during the Reconstruction era (1865–1877). Carpetbaggers allegedly politically manipulated and controlled former Confederate states for financial and power gains. In modern usage in the U.S., the term is sometimes used derisively to refer to a politician who runs for public office in an area where they do not have deep community ties or has lived only for a short time. In the United Kingdom, the term was adopted to refer informally to those who join a mutual organization, such as a building society, to force it to demutualize, that is, to convert into a joint-stock company, solely for personal financial gain.
Cutting the rug is a slang term for dancing that originated in 1942.[5] The use of the word "rug" as an informal term for a "toupee" (man's wig) is theater slang from 1940.[5] The term "sweep [something] under the rug" or "sweep [something] under the carpet" figuratively refers to situations where a person or organization is hiding something embarrassing or harmful; this use was first recorded in 1953.[3] The figurative expression "pull the rug out from under (someone)," meaning to "suddenly deprive of important support," is first attested to in 1936 in American English. A related figurative expression used centuries earlier was "cut the grass under (one's) feet," which is attested to in the 1580s.[5] A "rugrat" or "rugrat" is a slang term for a baby or child, first certified in 1968.[5] The expression "snug as a bug in a rug" means "wrapped up tight, warm, and comfortable."[63] "lie like a rug" means "to tell lies shamelessly."[64] The expression "pull the rug out (from under someone)" means "to make someone or someone's plans fall through" or "to upset someone's plans.
An oriental rug is a heavy textile made for a wide variety of practical and symbolic purposes and produced in "Oriental countries" for home use, local sale, and export.
Oriental carpets can be pile woven or flat woven without rising, using various materials such as silk, wool, and cotton. Examples range in size from pillows to large, room-sized carpets and include:
Carrier bags.
Floor coverings.
Decorations for animals.
Islamic prayer rugs ('Jai'namaz').
Jewish Torah ark covers (parochet).
Christian altar covers.
Since the High Middle Ages, oriental rugs have been an integral part of their cultures of origin and the European and, later on, the North American culture.[1]
Geographically, oriental rugs are made in an area referred to as the "Rug Belt," which stretches from Morocco across North Africa, the Middle East, and into Central Asia and northern India. It includes countries such as north China, Tibet, Turkey, Iran, the Maghreb in the west, the Caucasus in the north, and India and Pakistan in the SouthSouth. Oriental rugs were also made in South Africa from the early 1980s to the mid-1990s in the village of Ilinge close to Queenstown.
People from different cultures, countries, racial groups, and religious faiths are involved in the production of oriental rugs. Since many of these countries lie in an area that today is referred to as the Islamic world, oriental rugs are often also called "Islamic Carpets," [2] and the term "oriental rug" is used mainly for convenience. The carpets from Iran are known as "Persian Carpets."[3]
In 2010, the "traditional skills of carpet weaving" in the Iranian province of Fārs,[4] the Iranian town of Kashan,[5] and the "traditional art of Azerbaijani carpet weaving" in the Republic of Azerbaijan" [6] were inscribed to the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage Lists.
The beginning of carpet weaving remains unknown, as carpets are subject to use, deterioration, and destruction by insects and rodents. There is little archaeological evidence to support any theory about the origin of the pile-woven carpet. The earliest surviving carpet fragments are spread over a wide geographic area and an extended period. Woven rugs probably developed from earlier floor coverings, made of felt, or a technique known as "extra-weft wrapping."[7][8] Flat-woven mats are made by tightly interweaving the warp and weft strands of the weave to produce a flat surface with no pile. The technique of weaving carpets further developed into a style known as extra-weft wrapping weaving, a method that has soumak and loop woven textiles. Loop weaving is done by pulling the weft strings over a gauge rod, creating loops of thread facing the weaver. The rod is either removed, leaving the loops closed, or the loops are cut over the protecting rod, resulting in a rug similar to a genuine pile rug.[9] Typically, hand-woven pile rugs are produced by knotting thread strings individually into the warps, cutting the cord after every knot. The fabric is then further stabilized by weaving ("shooting") in one or more weft strings and compacted by beating with a comb. It seems likely that knotted-pile carpets have been produced by people already familiar with extra-weft wrapping techniques.
Probably the oldest existing texts referring to carpets are preserved in cuneiform writing on clay tablets from the royal archives of the kingdom of Mari, from the 2nd millennium B.C. The Akkadian word for the rug is mardatu, and specialist rug weavers referred to as kāşiru are distinguished from other specialized professions like sack-makers (sabsu or sabsinnu).
To my Lord, speak! Your servant Ašqudum (says), I've requested a rug from my Lord, and they did not give me (one). [...]" (letter 16 8)
"To my Lord speak! Your servant Ašqudum (says), About the woman who is staying by herself in the palace of Hişamta—The matter does not meet the eye. It would be good if five women who weave carpets[12] stayed with her." (letter 26 58)
— Litteratures anciennes du proche-Orient, Paris, 1950.
Palace inventories from the archives of Nuzi, from the 15th/14th century B.C., record 20 large and 20 small mardatu to cover the chairs of Idrimi.[14]
There are documentary records of carpets being used by the ancient Greeks. Homer writes in Ilias XVII,350 that the body of Patroklos is covered with a "splendid carpet." In Odyssey Books VII and X, "carpets" are mentioned.
Around 400 BC, the Greek author Xenophon mentions "carpets" in his book Anabasis:
Next, he went to Timasion the Dardanian, for he heard that he had some Persian drinking cups and carpets.
Pliny the Elder wrote in (nat. VIII, 48) that carpets ("polymath") were invented in Alexandria. It is unknown whether these were flatweaves or pile weaves, as no detailed technical information is provided in the texts. The earliest known written sources refer to carpets as gifts given to or required from high-ranking persons.
The oldest known hand-knotted rug, which is nearly completely preserved, and can be thoroughly evaluated in every technical and design aspect, is the Pazyryk carpet, dated to the 5th century B.C. It was discovered in the late 1940s by the Russian archeologist Sergei Rudenko and his team.[16] The carpet was part of the grave gifts preserved frozen in ice in the Scythian burial mounds of the Pazyryk area in the Altai Mountains of Siberia[17]. The provenience of the Pazyryk carpet is under debate, as many carpet weaving countries claim to be its country of origin.[18] The carpet had been dyed with plant and insect dyes from the Mongolian steppes.[citation needed] Wherever it was produced, fine weaving in symmetric knots and elaborate pictorial design hint at an advanced state-of-the-art carpet weaving at the time of its production. The design of the carpet already shows the basic arrangement of what was to become the standard oriental carpet design: A field with repeating patterns, framed by the main border in elaborate design and several secondary barriers.
The explorer Mark Aurel Stein found flat-woven kilims dating to at least the fourth or fifth century A.D. in Turpan, East Turkestan, China, an area that still produces carpets today. Rug fragments were also found in the Lop Nur area and are woven in symmetrical knots, with 5-7 interwoven wefts after each row of knots, with a striped design and various colors. They are now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.[19]
Carpet fragments dated to the third or fourth century B.C. were excavated from burial mounds at Bashadar in the Ongudai District, Altai Republic, Russia, by S. Rudenko, the discoverer of the Pazyryk carpet. They show a fine weave of about 4650 asymmetrical knots per square decimeter[20]
Other fragments woven in symmetrical and asymmetrical knots have been found in Dura-Europos in Syria [21] and from the At-Tar caves in Iraq,[22] dated to the first centuries A.D.
These rare findings demonstrate that all the skills and techniques of dyeing and carpet weaving were already known in western Asia before the first century A.D.
Fragments of pile rugs from findspots in north-eastern Afghanistan, reportedly originating from the province of Samangan, have been carbon-14 dated to a period from the turn of the second century to the early Sasanian period. Among these fragments, some depict animals, like various stags (sometimes arranged in a procession, recalling the design of the Pazyryk carpet) or a mythical winged creature. Wool is used for warp, weft, and pile, the yarn is crudely spun, and the fragments are woven with the asymmetric knot associated with Persian and far-eastern carpets. Every three to five rows, pieces of unspun wool, strips of cloth, and leather are woven in.[23] These fragments are now in the Al-Sabah Collection in the Dar al-Athar al-Islamyya, Kuwait.
In the early fourteenth century, Marco Polo wrote about the central Anatolian province of "Turcomania" in his account of his travels:
"The other classes are Greeks and Armenians, who reside in the cities and fortified places and gain their living by commerce and manufacture. The best and most beautiful carpets are wrought here, silks of crimson and other rich colors. Amongst its cities are those of Kogi, Kaisariah, and Sevasta." [26]
Coming from Persia, Polo traveled from Sivas to Kayseri. Abu'l-Fida, citing Ibn Sa'id al-Maghribi, refers to carpet export from Anatolian cities in the late 13th century: "That's where Turkoman carpets are made, exported to all other countries." He and the Moroccan merchant Ibn Battuta mention Aksaray as a significant rug weaving center in the early-to-mid-14th century.
Pile woven Turkish carpets were found in Konya and Beyşehir in Turkey and Fostat in Egypt and were dated to the 13th century, which corresponds to the Anatolian Seljuq Period (1243–1302). Eight fragments were found in 1905 by F.R. Martin[27] in the Alâeddin Mosque in Konya, four in the Eşrefoğlu Mosque in Beyşehir in Konya province by R.M. Riefstahl in 1925.[28] More fragments were found in Fostat, today a suburb of the city of Cairo.[29]
By their original size (Riefstahl reports a carpet up to 6 meters (20 feet) long), the Konya carpets must have been produced in town manufactories, as looms of this size cannot be set up a nomadic or village home. Where precisely these carpets were woven is unknown. The field patterns of the Konya carpets are primarily geometric and minor with the carpet size. Similar patterns are arranged in diagonal rows:
Hexagons with plain or hooked outlines
Squares filled with stars, with interposed Kufic-like ornaments
Hexagons in diamonds composed of rhomboids, rhomboids filed with stylized flowers and leaves
Their main borders often contain Kufic ornaments. The corners are not "resolved," meaning the border design is cut off and does not continue around the corners. The colors (blue, red, green, to a lesser extent also, white, brown, yellow) are subdued; frequently, two shades of the same color are opposed to each other. Nearly all carpet fragments show different patterns and ornaments.
The Beyşehir carpets are closely related to the Konya carpets in design and color.[30] In contrast to the "animal carpets" of the following period, depictions of animals are rarely seen in the Seljuq carpet fragments. Rows of horned quadrupeds placed opposite each other or birds beside a tree can be recognized on some components. A near-complete carpet of this kind is now at the Museum of Islamic Art, Doha. It has survived in a Tibetan monastery and was removed by monks fleeing to Nepal during the Chinese cultural revolution.
The style of the Seljuq carpets finds parallels amongst the architectural decoration of contemporaneous mosques such as those at Divriği, Sivas, and Erzurum and may be related to Byzantine art.[31] Today, the carpets are at the Mevlana Museum in Konya and the Turkish and Islamic Arts Museum in Istanbul.
Knotted pile woven carpets were likely produced by people already familiar with extra-weft wrapping techniques. The different knot types in carpets from locations as distant from each other like the Pazyryk carpet (symmetric), the East Turkestan and Lop Nur (alternate single-weft knots), the At-Tar (symmetric, asymmetric, asymmetric loop knots), and the Fustat fragments (looped-pile, single, asymmetric knots) suggest that the technique as such may have evolved at different places and times.[32]
It is also debated whether pile-knotted carpets were initially woven by nomads who tried to imitate animal pelts as tent-floor coverings [33] or if they were a product of settled peoples. Several knives were found in the graves of women of a settled community in southwest Turkestan. The knives are remarkably similar to those used by Turkmen weavers for trimming the pile of a carpet.[34][35] Some ancient motifs on Turkmen carpets closely resemble the ornaments seen on early pottery from the same region.[36] The findings suggest that Turkestan may be among the first places we know of where pile-woven carpets were produced, but this does not mean it was the only place.[citation needed]
In the light of ancient sources and archaeological discoveries, it seems highly likely that the pile-woven carpet developed from one of the extra-weft wrapping weaving techniques and was first woven by settled people. The technique has probably evolved separately at different places and times. During the migrations of nomadic groups from Central Asia, the process and designs may have spread throughout the area, becoming the "rug belt" later. With the emergence of Islam, the westward migration of nomadic groups began to change Near Eastern history. After this period, knotted-pile carpets became an essential form of art under the influence of Islam, and where the nomadic tribes spread and began to be known as "Oriental" or "Islamic" carpets.
An oriental rug is woven on a loom, with warps, wefts, and piles made mainly of natural fibers like wool, cotton, and silk. In representative carpets, metal threads are woven of gold or silver. The rise consists of hand-spun or machine-spun strings of yarn, which are knotted into the warp and weft foundation. Usually, the pile threads are dyed with various natural or synthetic dyes. Once the weaving has finished, the rug is further processed by fastening its borders, clipping the pile to obtain an even surface, and washing, which may use added chemical solutions to modify the colors.
Materials used in carpet weaving and how they are combined vary in different rug weaving areas. Mainly, animal wool from sheep and goats is used, occasionally also from camels. Yak and horse hair have been used in Far Eastern, but rarely in Middle Eastern rugs. Cotton is used for the foundation of the carpet and in a pile. Silk from silkworms is used for representational rugs.
In most oriental rugs, the pile is of sheep's wool. Its characteristics and quality vary from each area to the next, depending on the breed of sheep, climatic conditions, pasturage, and the particular customs relating to when and how the wool is shorn and processed.[38] In the Middle East, rug wools come mainly from the fat-tailed and fat-rumped sheep races, which are distinguished, as their names suggest, by the accumulation of fat in the respective parts of their bodies. Different areas of a sheep's fleece yield different qualities of wool, depending on the ratio between the thicker and stiffer sheep hair and the finer fibers of the wool. Usually, sheep are shorn in spring and fall. The spring shear produces wool of finer quality. The lowest grade of wool used in carpet weaving is “skin” wool, which is removed chemically from dead animal skin.[39] Fibers from camels and goats are also used. Goat hair is mainly used for fastening the borders, or selvages, of Baluchi and Turkmen rugs, since it is more resistant to abrasion. Camel wool is occasionally used in Middle Eastern rugs. It is often dyed in black, or used in its natural colour. More often, wool said to be camel's wool turns out to be dyed sheep wool.
Cotton forms the foundation of warps and wefts of the majority of modern rugs. Nomads who cannot afford to buy cotton on the market use wool for warps and wefts, which are also traditionally made of wool in areas where cotton was not a local product. Cotton can be spun more tightly than wool, and tolerates more tension, which makes cotton a superior material for the foundation of a rug. Especially larger carpets are more likely to lie flat on the floor, whereas wool tends to shrink unevenly, and carpets with a woolen foundation may buckle when wet.[39] Chemically treated (mercerised) cotton has been used in rugs as a silk substitute since the late nineteenth century.
Silk is an expensive material, and has been used for representative carpets of the Mamluk, Ottoman, and Safavid courts. Its tensile strength has been used in silk warps, but silk also appears in the carpet pile. Silk pile can be used to highlight special elements of the design in Turkmen rugs, but more expensive carpets from Kashan, Qum, Nain, and Isfahan in Persia, and Istanbul and Hereke in Turkey, have all-silk piles. Silk pile carpets are often exceptionally fine, with a short pile and an elaborate design. Silk pile is less resistant to mechanical stress, thus, all-silk piles are often used as wall hangings, or pillow tapestry. Silk is more often used in rugs of Eastern Turkestan and Northwestern China, but these rugs tend to be more coarsely woven.
The fibers of wool, cotton, and silk are spun either by hand or mechanically by using spinning wheels or industrial spinning machines to produce the yarn. The direction in which the yarn is spun is called twist. Yarns are characterized as S-twist or Z-twist according to the direction of spinning (see diagram).[41] Two or more spun yarns may be twisted together or plied to form a thicker yarn. Generally, handspun single plies are spun with a Z-twist, and plying is done with an S-twist. With the exception of Mamluk carpets, nearly all the rugs produced in the countries of the rug belt use "Z" (anti-clockwise) spun and "S" (clockwise)-plied wool.
The dyeing process involves the preparation of the yarn in order to make it susceptible for the proper dyes by immersion in a mordant. Dyestuffs are then added to the yarn which remains in the dyeing solution for a defined time. The dyed yarn is then left to dry, exposed to air and sunlight. Some colours, especially dark brown, require iron mordants, which can damage or fade the fabric. This often results in faster pile wear in areas dyed in dark brown colours, and may create a relief effect in antique oriental carpets.
Traditional dyes used for oriental rugs are obtained from plants and insects. In 1856, the English chemist William Henry Perkin invented the first aniline dye, mauveine. A variety of other synthetic dyes were invented thereafter. Cheap, readily prepared and easy to use as they were compared to natural dyes, their use is documented in oriental rugs since the mid 1860s. The tradition of natural dyeing was revived in Turkey in the early 1980s, and later on, in Iran.[42] Chemical analyses led to the identification of natural dyes from antique wool samples, and dyeing recipes and processes were experimentally re-created.[43][44]
According to these analyzes, natural dyes used in Turkish carpets include:
Red from Madder (Rubia tinctorum) roots,
Yellow from plants, including onion (Allium cepa), several chamomile species (Anthemis, Matricaria chamomilla), and Euphorbia,
Black: Oak apples, Oak acorns, Tanner's sumach,
Green by double dyeing with Indigo and yellow dye,
Orange by double dyeing with madder red and yellow dye,
Blue: Indigo gained from Indigofera tinctoria.
Some of the dyestuffs like indigo or madder were goods of trade, and thus commonly available. Yellow or brown dyestuffs more substantially vary from region to region. In some instances, the analysis of the dye has provided information about the provenience of a rug.[45] Many plants provide yellow dyes, like Vine weld, or Dyer's weed (Reseda luteola), Yellow larkspur (perhaps identical with the isparek plant), or Dyer's sumach Cotinus coggygria. Grape leaves and pomegranate rinds, as well as other plants, provide different shades of yellow.
Carmine dyes are obtained from resinous secretions of scale insects such as the Cochineal scale Coccus cacti, and certain Porphyrophora species (Armenian and Polish cochineal). Cochineal dye, the so-called "laq" was formerly exported from India, and later on from Mexico and the Canary Islands. Insect dyes were more frequently used in areas where Madder (Rubia tinctorum) was not grown, like west and north-west Persia.[47] Kermes is another common red dye obtained from the crushed dried bodies of a female scale insect. This dye was considered by many in the Middle East to be one of the most valuable and important dyes.
With modern synthetic dyes, nearly every colour and shade can be obtained so that it is nearly impossible to identify, in a finished carpet, whether natural or artificial dyes were used. Modern carpets can be woven with carefully selected synthetic colours, and provide artistic and utilitarian value.
The appearance of slight deviations within the same colour is called abrash (from Turkish abraş, literally, “speckled, piebald”). Abrash is seen in traditionally dyed oriental rugs. Its occurrence suggests that a single weaver has likely woven the carpet, who did not have enough time or resources to prepare a sufficient quantity of dyed yarn to complete the rug. Only small batches of wool were dyed from time to time. When one string of wool was used up, the weaver continued with the newly dyed batch. Because the exact hue of colour is rarely met again when a new batch is dyed, the colour of the pile changes when a new row of knots is woven in. As such, the colour variation suggests a village or tribal woven rug, and is appreciated as a sign of quality and authenticity. Abrash can also be introduced on purpose into a pre-planned carpet design.
A variety of tools are needed for the construction of a handmade rug. A loom, a horizontal or upright framework, is needed to mount the vertical warps into which the pile nodes are knotted. One or more shoots of horizontal wefts are woven (“shot”) in after each row of knots in order to further stabilize the fabric.
Nomads usually use a horizontal loom. In its simplest form, two loom beams are fastened, and kept apart by stakes which are driven into the ground. The tension of the warps is maintained by driving wedges between the loom beams and the stakes. If the nomad journey goes on, the stakes are pulled out, and the unfinished rug is rolled up on the beams. The size of the loom beams is limited by the need to be easily transportable, thus, genuine nomad rugs are often small in size. In Persia, loom beams were mostly made of poplar, because poplar is the only tree which is easily available and straight.[51] The closer the warps are spanned, the more dense the rug can be woven. The width of a rug is always determined by the length of the loom beams. Weaving starts at the lower end of the loom, and proceeds towards the upper end.
Traditionally, horizontal looms were used by the
Kurds, Afshari, Qashqai, Lurs, Baloch, Turkmen and Bakhtiari in Persia;
Baloch and Turkmen in Afghanistan and Turkmenistan;
Kurds and nomads (Yörük) in Anatolia.
The technically more advanced, stationary vertical looms are used in villages and town manufactures. The more advanced types of vertical looms are more comfortable, as they allow for the weavers to retain their position throughout the entire weaving process. In essence, the width of the carpet is limited by the length of the loom beams. While the dimensions of a horizontal loom define the maximum size of the rug which can be woven on it, on a vertical loom longer carpets can be woven, as the completed sections of the rugs can be moved to the back of the loom, or rolled up on a beam, as the weaving proceeds.[51]
There are three general types of vertical looms, all of which can be modified in a number of ways: the fixed village loom, the Tabriz or Bunyan loom, and the roller beam loom.
The fixed village loom is used mainly in Iran and consists of a fixed upper beam and a moveable lower or cloth beam which slots into two sidepieces. The correct tension of the warps is obtained by driving wedges into the slots. The weavers work on an adjustable plank which is raised as the work progresses.
The Tabriz loom, named after the city of Tabriz, is used in Northwestern Iran. The warps are continuous and pass around behind the loom. Warp tension is obtained with wedges. The weavers sit on a fixed seat and when a portion of the carpet has been completed, the tension is released, the finished section of the carpet is pulled around the lower beam and upwards on the back of the loom. The Tabriz type of vertical loom allows for weaving of carpets up to double the length of the loom.
The roller beam loom is used in larger Turkish manufactures, but is also found in Persia and India. It consists of two movable beams to which the warps are attached. Both beams are fitted with ratchets or similar locking devices. Once a section of the carpet is completed, it is wound up on the lower beam. On a roller beam loom, any length of carpet can be produced. In some areas of Turkey several rugs are woven in series on the same warps, and separated from each other by cutting the warps after the weaving is finished.
The vertical loom enables weaving of larger rug formats. The most simple vertical loom, usually used in villages, has fixed beams. The length of the loom determines the length of the rug. As the weaving proceeds, the weavers' benches must be moved upwards, and fixed again at the new working height. Another type of loom is used in manufactures. The wefts are fixed and spanned on the beams, or, in more advanced types of looms, the wefts are spanned on a roller beam, which allows for any length of carpet to be woven, as the finished part of the carpet is rolled up on the roller beam. Thus, the weavers' benches always remain at the same height.
Few essential tools are needed in carpet weaving: Knives are used to cut the yarn after the knot is made, a heavy instrument like a comb for beating in the wefts, and a pair of scissors for trimming off the ends of the yarn after each row of knots is finished. From region to region, they vary in size and design, and in some areas are supplemented by other tools. The weavers of Tabriz used a combined blade and hook. The hook projects from the end of the blade, and is used for knotting, instead of knotting with the fingers. Comb-beaters are passed through the warp strings to beat in the wefts. When the rug is completed, the pile is often shorn with special knives to obtain an even surface.
Warps and wefts form the foundation of the carpet, the pile accounts for the design. Warps, wefts and pile may consist of any of these materials:
warp weft pile often found in
wool wool wool nomad and village rugs
cotton cotton wool manufacture rugs
silk silk silk manufacture rugs
cotton cotton silk manufacture rugs
Rugs can be woven with their warp strings held back on different levels, termed sheds. This is done by pulling the wefts of one shed tight, separating the warps on two different levels, which leaves one warp on a lower level. The technical term is “one warp is depressed”. Warps can be depressed slightly, ore more tightly, which will cause a more or less pronounced rippling or “ridging” on the back of the rug. A rug woven with depressed warps is described as “double warped”. Central Iranian city rugs such as Kashan, Isfahan, Qom, and Nain have deeply depressed warps, which make the pile more dense, the rug is heavier than a more loosely woven specimen, and the rug lies more firmly on the floor. Kurdish Bidjar carpets make most pronounced use of warp depression. Often their pile is further compacted by the use of a metal rod which is driven between the warps and hammered down on, which produces a dense and rigid fabric.
The pile knots are usually knotted by hand. Most rugs from Anatolia utilize the symmetrical Turkish double knot. With this form of knotting, each end of the pile thread is twisted around two warp threads at regular intervals, so that both ends of the knot come up between two warp strings on one side of the carpet, opposite to the knot. The thread is then pulled downwards and cut with a knife.
Most rugs from other provenances use the asymmetric, or Persian knot. This knot is tied by winding a piece of thread around one warp, and halfway around the next warp, so that both ends of the thread come up at the same side of two adjacent strings of warp on one side of the carpet, opposite to the knot. The pile, i.e., the loose end of the thread, can appear on the left or right side of the warps, thus defining the terms “open to the left” or “open to the right”. Variances in the type of knots are significant, as the type of knot used in a carpet may vary on a regional, or tribal, basis. Whether the knots are open to the left or to the right can be determined by passing one's hands over the pile.[54]
A variant knot is the so-called jufti knot, which is woven around four strings of warp, with each loop of one single knot tied around two warps. Jufti can be knotted symmetrically or asymmetrically, open to the left or right.[53] A serviceable carpet can be made with jufti knots, and jufti knots are sometimes used in large single-colour areas of a rug, for example in the field. However, as carpets woven wholly or partly with the jufti knot need only half the amount of pile yarn than traditionally woven carpets, their pile is less resistant to wear, and these rugs do not last long.[55]
Another variant of knot is known from early Spanish rugs. The Spanish knot or single-warp knot, is tied around one single warp. Some of the rug fragments excavated by A. Stein in Turfan seem to be woven with a single knot. Single knot weavings are also known from Egyptian Coptic pile rugs.[56]
Irregular knots sometimes occur, and include missed warps, knots over three or four warps, single warp knots, or knots sharing one warp, both symmetric and asymmetric. They are frequently found in Turkmen rugs, and contribute to the dense and regular structure of these rugs.
Diagonal, or offset knotting has knots in successive rows occupy alternate pairs of warps. This feature allows for changes from one half knot to the next, and creates diagonal pattern lines at different angles. It is sometimes found in Kurdish or Turkmen rugs, particularly in Yomuds. It is mostly tied symmetrically.[39]
The upright pile of oriental rugs usually inclines in one direction, as knots are always pulled downwards before the string of pile yarn is cut off and work resumes on the next knot, piling row after row of knots on top of each other. When passing one's hand over a carpet, this creates a feeling similar to stroking an animal's fur. This can be used to determine where the weaver has started knotting the pile. Prayer rugs are often woven “upside down”, as becomes apparent when the direction of the pile is assessed. This has both technical reasons (the weaver can focus on the more complicated niche design first), and practical consequences (the pile bends in the direction of the worshipper's prostration).
The knot count is expressed in knots per square inch (kpsi) or per square decimeter. Knot count per square decimeter can be converted to square inch by division by 15.5. Knot counts are best performed on the back of the rug. If the warps are not too deeply depressed, the two loops of one knot will remain visible, and will have to be counted as one knot. If one warp is deeply depressed, only one loop of the knot may be visible, which has to be considered when the knots are counted.
Compared to the kpsi counts, additional structural information is obtained when the horizontal and vertical knots are counted separately. In Turkmen carpets, the ratio between horizontal and vertical knots is frequently close to 1:1. Considerable technical skill is required to achieve this knot ratio. Rugs which are woven in this manner are very dense and durable.[57]
Knot counts bear evidence of the fineness of the weaving, and of the amount of labour needed to complete the rug. However, the artistic and utilitarian value of a rug hardly depends on knot counts, but rather on the execution of the design and the colours. For example, Persian Heriz or some Anatolian carpets may have low knot counts as compared to the extremely fine-woven Qom or Nain rugs, but provide artistic designs, and are resistant to wear.
Once the weaving is finished, the rug is cut from the loom. Additional work has to be done before the rug is ready for use.
The edges of a rug need additional protection, as they are exposed to particular mechanical stress. The last warps on each side of the rug are often thicker than the inner warps, or doubled. The edge may consist of only one warp, or of a bundle of warps, and is attached to the rugs by weft shoots looping over it, which is termed an “overcast”. The edges are often further reinforced by encircling it in wool, goat's hair, cotton, or silk in various colours and designs. Edges thus reinforced are called selvedges, or shirazeh from the Persian word.
The remaining ends of the warp threads form the fringes that may be weft-faced, braided, tasseled, or secured in some other manner. Especially Anatolian village and nomadic rugs have flat-woven kilim ends, made by shooting in wefts without pile at the beginning and end of the weaving process. They provide further protection against wear, and sometimes include pile-woven tribal signs or village crests.
The pile of the carpet is shorn with special knives (or carefully burned down) in order to remove excess pile and obtain an equal surface. In parts of Central Asia, a small sickle-shaped knife with the outside edge sharpened is used for pile shearing. Knives of this shape have been excavated from Bronze Age sites in Turkmenistan (cited in[58]). In some carpets, a relief effect is obtained by clipping the pile unevenly following the contours of the design. This feature is often seen in Chinese and Tibetan rugs.
Most carpets are washed before they are used or go to the market. The washing may be done with water and soap only, but more often chemicals are added to modify the colours. Various chemical washings were invented in New York, London, and other European centers. The washing often included chlorine bleach or sodium hydrosulfite. Chemical washings not only damage the wool fibers, but change the colours to an extent that some rugs had to be re-painted with different colours after the washing, as is exemplified by the so-called "American Sarouk" carpet.
Oriental rugs are known for their richly varied designs, but common traditional characteristics identify the design of a carpet as “oriental”. With the exception of pile relief obtained by clipping the pile unevenly, rug design originates from a two-dimensional arrangement of knots in various colours. Each knot tied into a rug can be regarded as one "pixel" of a picture, which is composed by the arrangement of knot after knot. The more skilled the weaver or, as in manufactured rugs, the designer, the more elaborate the design.
A rug design is described either as rectilinear (or “geometric”), or curvilinear (or “floral”). Curvilinear rugs show floral figures in a realistic manner. The drawing is more fluid, and the weaving is often more complicated. Rectilinear patterns tend to be bolder and more angular. Floral patterns can be woven in rectilinear design, but they tend to be more abstract, or more highly stylized. Rectilinear design is associated with nomadic or village weaving, whereas the intricate curvilinear designs require pre-planning, as is done in factories. Workshop rugs are usually woven according to a plan designed by an artist and handed over to the weaver to execute it on the loom.
Rug design can also be described by how the surface of the rug is arranged and organized. One single, basic design may cover the entire field (“all-over design”). When the end of the field is reached, patterns may be cut off intentionally, thus creating the impression that they continue beyond the borders of the rug. This feature is characteristic for Islamic design: In the Islamic tradition, depicting animals or humans is discouraged. Since the codification of the Quran by Uthman Ibn Affan in 651 AD/19 AH and the Umayyad Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan reforms, Islamic art has focused on writing and ornament. The main fields of Islamic rugs are frequently filled with redundant, interwoven ornaments in a manner called "infinite repeat".[61]
Design elements may also be arranged more elaborately. One typical oriental rug design uses a medallion, a symmetrical pattern occupying the center of the field. Parts of the medallion, or similar, corresponding designs, are repeated at the four corners of the field. The common “Lechek Torūnj” (medallion and corner) design was developed in Persia for book covers and ornamental book illuminations in the fifteenth century. In the sixteenth century, it was integrated into carpet designs. More than one medallion may be used, and these may be arranged at intervals over the field in different sizes and shapes. The field of a rug may also be broken up into different rectangular, square, diamond or lozenge shaped compartments, which in turn can be arranged in rows, or diagonally.[60]
In Persian rugs, the medallion represents the primary pattern, and the infinite repeat of the field appears subordinated, creating an impression of the medallion “floating” on the field. Anatolian rugs often use the infinite repeat as the primary pattern, and integrate the medallion as secondary. Its size is often adapted to fit into the infinite repeat.
In most Oriental rugs, the field of the rug is surrounded by stripes, or borders. These may number from one up to over ten, but usually there is one wider main border surrounded by minor, or guardian borders. The main border is often filled with complex and elaborate rectilinear or curvilinear designs. The minor border stripes show simpler designs like meandering vines or reciprocal trefoils. The latter are frequently found in Caucasian and some Turkish rugs, and are related to the Chinese “cloud collar” (yun chien) motif.[63] The traditional border arrangement was highly conserved through time, but can also be modified to the effect that the field encroaches on the main border. Seen in Kerman rugs and Turkish rugs from the late eighteenth century "mecidi" period, this feature was likely taken over from French Aubusson or Savonnerie weaving designs. Additional end borders called elem, or skirts, are seen in Turkmen and some Turkish rugs. Their design often differs from the rest of the borders. Elem are used to protect the lower borders of tent door rugs ("ensi"). Chinese and Tibetan rugs sometimes do not have any borders.
Designing the carpet borders becomes particularly challenging when it comes to the corner articulations. The ornaments have to be woven in a way that the pattern continues without interruption around the corners between horizontal and vertical borders. This requires advance planning either by a skilled weaver who is able to plan the design from start, or by a designer who composes a cartoon before the weaving begins. If the ornaments articulate correctly around the corners, the corners are termed to be “resolved”. In village or nomadic rugs, which are usually woven without a detailed advance plan, the corners of the borders are often not resolved. The weaver has discontinued the pattern at a certain stage, e.g., when the lower horizontal border is finished, and starts anew with the vertical borders. The analysis of the corner resolutions helps distinguishing rural village, or nomadic, from workshop rugs.
The field, or sections of it, can also be covered with smaller design elements. The overall impression may be homogeneous, although the design of the elements themselves can be highly complicated. Amongst the repeating figures, the boteh is used throughout the “carpet belt”. Boteh can be depicted in curvilinear or rectilinear style. The most elaborate boteh are found in rugs woven around Kerman. Rugs from Seraband, Hamadan, and Fars sometimes show the boteh in an all-over pattern. Other design elements include ancient motifs like the Tree of life, or floral and geometric elements like, e.g., stars or palmettes.
Single design elements can also be arranged in groups, forming a more complex pattern:[64][65]
The Herati pattern consists of a lozenge with floral figure at the corners surrounded by lancet-shaped leaves sometimes called “fish”. Herati patterns are used throughout the “carpet belt”; typically, they are found in the fields of Bidjar rugs.
The Mina Khani pattern is made up of flowers arranged in a rows, interlinked by diamond (often curved) or circular lines. frequently all over the field. The Mina Khani design is often seen on Varamin rugs.
The Shah Abbasi design is composed of a group of palmettes. Shah Abbasi motifs are frequently seen in Kashan, Isfahan, Mashhad and Nain rugs.
The Bid Majnūn, or Weeping Willow design is in fact a combination of weeping willow, cypress, poplar and fruit trees in rectilinear form. Its origin was attributed to Kurdish tribes, as the earliest known examples are from the Bidjar area.
The Harshang or Crab design takes its name from its principal motive, which is a large oval motive suggesting a crab. The pattern is found all over the rug belt, but bear some resemblance to palmettes from the Sefavi period, and the “claws” of the crab may be conventionalized arabesques in rectilinear style.
The Gol Henai small repeating pattern is named after the Henna plant, which it does not much resemble. The plant looks more like the Garden balsam, and in the Western literature is sometimes compared to the blossom of the Horse chestnut.
The Gul design is frequently found in Turkmen rugs. Small round or octagonal medallions are repeated in rows all over the field. Although the Gül medallion itself can be very elaborate and colourful, their arrangement within the monochrome field often generates a stern and somber impression. Güls are often ascribed a heraldic function, as it is possible to identify the tribal provenience of a Turkmen rug by its güls.
A different type of field design in a specific Islamic design tradition is used in prayer rugs. A prayer rug is characterized by a niche at one end, representing the mihrab, an architectural element in mosques intended to direct the worshippers towards the Qibla. Prayer rugs also show highly symbolic smaller design elements like one or more mosque lamps, a reference to the Verse of Light in the Qur'an, or water jugs, potentially as a reminder towards ritual cleanliness. Sometimes stylized hands or feet appear in the field to indicate where the worshipper should stand, or to represent the praying person's prostration.[67] Other special types include garden, compartment, vase, animal, or pictorial designs.
During the 15th century, a fundamental change appeared in carpet design. Because no carpets survived from this period, research has focused on Timurid period book illuminations and miniature paintings. Earlier Timurid paintings depict colourful carpets with repeating designs of equal-scale geometric patterns, arranged in checkerboard-like designs, with “kufic” border ornaments derived from Islamic calligraphy. The designs are so similar to period Anatolian carpets, especially the “Holbein carpets” that a common source of the design cannot be excluded: Timurid designs may have survived in both the Persian and Anatolian carpets from the early Safavid, and Ottoman period.[68]
By the late fifteenth century, the design of the carpets depicted in miniatures changed considerably. Large-format medaillons appeared, ornaments began to show elaborate curvilinear designs. Large spirals and tendrils, floral ornaments, depictions of flowers and animals, were often mirrored along the long or short axis of the carpet to obtain harmony and rhythm. The earlier “kufic” border design was replaced by tendrils and arabesques. The resulting change in carpet design was what Kurt Erdmann termed the “carpet design revolution”.
Four "social layers" of carpet production can be distinguished: Rugs were woven simultaneously by and for nomads, rural villages, towns, and the royal court. Rural village, and nomad carpet designs represent independent artistic traditions.[70] Elaborate rug designs from court and town were integrated into village and nomadic design traditions by means of a process termed stylization.[2] When rugs are woven for the market, the weavers adapt their production in order to meet the customers' demands, and to maximize their profit. As is the case with Oriental rugs, adaptation to the export market has brought forth devastating effects on the culture of rug weaving. In the case of Turkmen carpet weavers, globalization has alienated many weavers from their own forms of artistic expression and their cultural heritage is now on the global market.[71] The (Western) market's desire for 'authenticity' in Oriental carpets has led to a revival of old traditions in more recent years.
Representative "court" rugs were woven by special workshops, often founded and supervised by the sovereign, with the intention to represent power and status:[72] The East Roman (Byzantine) and the Persian Sasanian Empires have coexisted for more than 400 years. Artistically, both empires have developed similar styles and decorative vocabularies, as exemplified by mosaics and architecture of Roman Antioch.[73] An Anatolian carpet pattern depicted on Jan van Eyck's “Paele Madonna” painting was traced back to late Roman origins and related to early Islamic floor mosaics found in the Umayyad palace of Khirbat al-Mafjar.[74] Rugs were produced in the court manufactures as special commissions or gifts (some carpets included inwoven European coats of arms). Their elaborate design required a division of work between an artist who created a design plan (termed “cartoon”) on paper, and a weaver who was given the plan for execution on the loom. Thus, artist and weaver were separated.[23] Their appearance in Persian book illuminations and miniatures as well as in European paintings provides material for their dating by using the “terminus ante quem” approach.
High-status examples like Safavid or Ottoman court carpets are not the only foundation of the historical and social framework. The reality of carpet production does not reflect this selection: Carpets were simultaneously produced by and for the three different social levels. Patterns and ornaments from court manufactory rugs have been reproduced by smaller (town or village) workshops. This process is well documented for Ottoman prayer rugs.[2] As prototypical court designs were passed on to smaller workshops, and from one generation to the next, the design underwent a process termed stylization, comprising series of small, incremental changes either in the overall design, or in details of smaller patterns and ornaments, over time. As a result, the prototype may be modified to an extent as to barely being recognizable. A mihrab column may change into a detached row of ornaments, a Chinese dragon may undergo stylization until it becomes unrecognizable in a Caucasian dragon carpet.
Pile rugs and flat weaves were essential items in all rural households and nomadic tents. They were part of a tradition that was at times influenced, but essentially distinct from the invented designs of the workshop production. Frequently, mosques had acquired rural carpets as charitable gifts, which provided material for studies.[75] Rural carpets rarely include cotton for warps and wefts, and almost never silk, as these materials had to be purchased on the market.
With the end of the traditional nomadic lifestyle in large parts of the rug belt area, and the consequent loss of specific traditions, it has become difficult to identify a genuine “nomadic rug”. Tribes known for their nomadic lifestyle like the Yürük in Anatolia, or the Kurds and Qashqai in contemporary Turkey and Southwestern Iran have voluntarily or by force acquired sedentary lifestyles. Migration of peoples and tribes, in peace or warfare, has frequently happened throughout the history of Turkic peoples, as well as Persian and Caucasian tribes. Some designs may have been preserved, which can be identified as specifically nomadic or tribal.[76][77][78][79][80] “Nomadic” rugs can be identified by their material, construction, and colours. Specific ornaments can be traced back in history to ancient motifs.[80]
Criteria for nomadic production include:[81]
Unusual materials like warps made of goat's hair, or camel wool in the pile;
high quality wool with long pile (Anatolian and Turkmen nomads);
small format fitting for a horizontal loom;
irregular format due to frequent re-assembly of the loom, resulting in irregular tension of the warps;
pronounced abrash (irregularities within the same colour due to dyeing of yarn in small batches);
inclusion of flat weaves at the ends.
Within the genre of carpet weaving, the most authentic village and nomadic products were those woven to serve the needs of the community, which were not intended for export or trade other than local. This includes specialized bags and bolster covers (yastik) in Anatolia, which show designs adapted from the earliest weaving traditions.[82] In Turkmen tents, large wide bags (chuval) were used to keep clothings and household articles. Smaller (torba) and midsize (mafrash) and a variety of special bags to keep bread or salt were woven. They are usually made of two sides, one or both of them pile or flat-woven, and then sewn together. Long tent bands woven in mixed pile and flat weave adorned the tents, and carpets known as ensi covered the entrance of the tent, while the door was decorated with a pile-woven door surround. Turkmen, and also tribes like the Bakhtiari nomads of western Iran, or the Qashqai people wove animal trappings like saddle covers, or special decorations for weddings like asmalyk, pentagonally shaped camel coverings used for wedding decorations. Tribal signs like the Turkmen Gül can support the assessment of provenience.
May H. Beattie[83] (1908–1997), a distinguished scholar in the field of carpet studies, wrote in 1976:[84]
The symbolism of Oriental rug designs has recently been made the subject of a number of articles. Many of the ideas put forward are of great interest, but to attempt to discuss such a subject without a profound knowledge of the philosophies of the East would be unwise, and could easily provide unreliable food for unbridled imaginations. One may believe implicitly in certain things, but especially if they have an ancient religious basis, it may not always be possible to prove them. Such ideas merit attention.
— May H. Beattie, Carpets of central Persia, 1976, p. 19
Oriental rugs from various proveniences often share common motifs. Various attempts have been made to determine the potential origin of these ornaments. Woven motifs of folk art undergo changes through processes depending on human creativity, trial and error, and unpredictable mistakes,[85] but also through the more active process of stylization. The latter process is well documented, as the integration into the work of rural village and nomad weavers of patterns designed in town manufactures can be followed on carpets which still exist. In the more archaic motifs, the process of pattern migration and evolution cannot be documented, because the material evidence does not exist any more. This has led to various speculations about the origins and “meanings” of patterns, often resulting in unsubstantiated claims.
Prehistoric symbolism[edit]
In 1967, the British archaeologist James Mellaart claimed to have found the oldest records of flat woven kilims on wall paintings he discovered in the Çatalhöyük excavations, dated to circa 7000 BC.[86] The drawings Mellaart claimed to have made before the wall paintings disappeared after their exposure showed clear similarities to nineteenth century designs of Turkish flatweaves. He interpreted the forms, which evoked a female figure, as evidence of a Mother Goddess cult in Çatalhöyük. A well-known pattern in Anatolian kilims, sometimes referred to as Elibelinde (lit.: “hands on hips”), was therefore determined to depict the Mother Goddess herself. This theory had to be abandoned after Mellaarts claims were denounced as fraudulent,[87] and his claims refuted by other archaeologists. The elibelinde motif lost its divine meaning and prehistoric origin. It is today understood as a design of stylized carnation flowers, and its development can be traced back in a detailed and unbroken line to Ottoman court carpets of the sixteenth century.
Symbols of protection against evil are frequently found on Ottoman and later Anatolian carpets. The Turkish name for these symbols is nazarlık (lit.: "[protection from] the evil eye"). Apotropaic symbols include the Cintamani motif, often depicted on white ground Selendi carpets, which consists of three balls and a pair of wavy stripes. It serves the same purpose as protective inscriptions like "May God protect", which are seen woven into rugs. Another protective symbol often woven into carpets is the triangular talisman pendant, or "muska". This symbol is found in Anatolian, Persian, Caucasian and Central Asian carpets.
Some carpets include symbols which serve as a tribal crest and sometimes allow for the identification of the weaver's tribe. This is especially true for Turkmen pile woven textiles, which depict a variety of different medallion-like polygonal patterns called Gul, arranged in rows all over the field. While the origin of the pattern can be traced back to Buddhist depictions of the lotus blossom,[63] it remains questionable if the weaver of such a tribal symbol was aware of its origins.
Early Anatolian carpets often show a geometric border design with two arrowhead-like extensions in a sequence of tall-short-tall. By its similarity to the kufic letters of alif and lām, borders with this ornament are called "kufic" borders. The letters are thought to represent the word “Allah”. Another theory relates the tall-short-tall ornament to split-palmette motifs. The "alif-lām" motif is already seen on early Anatolian carpets from the Eşrefoğlu Mosque in Beyşehir.
The symbolism of the Islamic Prayer rug is more easily understandable. A prayer rug is characterized by a niche at one end, representing the mihrab in every mosque, a directional point to direct the worshipper towards Mecca. Often one or more mosque lamps hang from the point of the arch, a reference to the Verse of Light in the Qur'an. Sometimes a comb and pitcher are depicted, which is a reminder for Muslims to wash their hands and for men to comb their hair before performing prayer. Stylized hands are woven in the rug pile, indicating where the hands should be placed when performing prayer, often also interpreted as the Hamsa, or “Hand of Fatima”, a protective amulet against the evil eye.
Works on symbolism, and books which include more detailed information on the origin of ornaments and patterns in Oriental carpets include:
E. Moshkova: Carpets of the people of Central Asia of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Tucson, 1996. Russian edition, 1970[89]
S. Camman: The Symbolism of the cloud collar motif.[90]
J. Thompson: Essay on "Centralized Designs"[63]
J. Opie: Tribal Rugs of Southern Persia, Portland, Oregon, 1981[79]
J. Opie: Tribal rugs, 1992[80]
W. Denny: How to read Islamic carpets,[2] section "Reading carpet symbolism", p. 109–127.
Since the beginning of the Oriental rug trade in the High Middle Ages, Western market demand has influenced the rug manufacturers producing for export, who had to adapt their production in order to accommodate Western market demands. The commercial success of oriental rugs, and the mercantilistic thinking which arose during the sixteenth century, led European sovereigns to initiate and promote carpet manufactories in their European home countries. Beginning in the late nineteenth century, Western companies set up weaving facilities in the rug-producing countries, and commissioned designs specifically invented according to Western taste.
Rugs exist which are known to be woven in European manufactories as early as the mid sixteenth century, imitating the technique and, to some extent, the designs of Oriental rugs. In Sweden, flat and pile woven rugs (called “rya”, or “rollakan”) became part of the folk art, and are still produced today, mostly in modern designs. In other countries, like Poland or Germany, the art of carpet weaving did not last long. In the United Kingdom, Axminster carpets were produced since the mid-eighteenth century. In France, the Savonnerie manufactory began weaving pile carpets by the mid-seventeenth centuries, but turned to European-style designs later on, which in turn influenced the Anatolian rug production during the “mecidi”, or “Turkish baroque” period. The Manchester-based company Ziegler & Co. maintained workshops in Tabriz and Sultanabad (now Arak) and supplied retailers such as Liberty & Company and Harvey Nichols. Their designs were modifications of the traditional Persian. A. C. Edwards was the manager of the Oriental Carpet Manufacturers' operations[91] in Persia from 1908 to 1924, and wrote one of the classical textbooks about the Persian carpet.
In the late nineteenth century, the Western invention of synthetic dyes had a devastating effect on the traditional way of carpet production.[92][93] During the early twentieth century, carpets were woven in the cities of Saruk and Arak, Iran and the surrounding villages mainly for export to the U.S. While the sturdy construction of their pile appealed to U.S. American customers, their designs and colours did not fit in with the demands. The traditional design of the Saruk rug was modified by the weavers towards an allover design of detached floral motives, the carpets were then chemically washed to remove the unwanted colours, and the pile was painted over again with more desirable colours.[94]
In its home countries, the ancient art and craft of carpet weaving has been revived. Since the early 1980s, initiatives were ongoing like the DOBAG project in Turkey, in Iran,[42] and by various social projects in Afghanistan and amongst Tibetan refugees in Northern India. Naturally dyed, traditionally woven rugs are available on the Western market again.[95] With the end of the U.S. embargo on Iranian goods, also Persian carpets (including antique carpets sold at auctions) may become more easily available to U.S. customers again.
In 1981 DOBAG (National Dye Research and Development Project) was founded by a German scientist in Western Anatolia, Turkey.[96] The purpose of the project was to revitalize the traditional craft of hand-weaving carpets with natural dyes while also empowering women and helping them with economic independence. In this project, there was an emphasis on the ‘traditional’ and ‘authentic’ carpet, but this interest was based not on the desires of the Turkish women weaving the carpets but rather the German scholar and his perception of Turkish culture. Later scholars noted that some of the local women viewed carpet making as a vehicle for innovation, but they were constrained by the Western desire for an ‘authentic’ Turkish carpet.[97] The DOBAG project was closely related to globalization in multiple ways. First, the project was devised as a response to globalization because many of the women recruited for the program had lost their previous carpet weaving jobs due to new production methods and globalization. The solution though was also deeply reflective of a globalized world because the carpets were marketed to Western tourists. The carpets were intended to look ‘authentic,’ to a Western eye, but they were not made with emotional or traditional attachment, raising questions about the nature of authenticity.
Oriental rugs have always attracted collectors' interest, and sold at high prizes.[98] This has also been an incentive for fraudulent behaviour.[30] Techniques used traditionally in rug restoration, like replacing knots, or re-weaving parts of a rug, can also be used to modify a rug so as to appear older or more valuable than it actually is. Old flatweaves can be unravelled to obtain longer threads of yarn which can then be re-knitted into rugs. These forgeries are able to overcome chromatographic dye analysis and radiocarbon dating, since they make use of period material.[99] The Romanian artisan Teodor Tuduc has become famous for his fake oriental rugs, and the stories which he delivered in order to gain credibility. The quality of his forgeries was such that some of his rugs found their way into museum collections, and “Tuduc rugs” have themselves become collectable.
Oriental rugs can be classified by their region of origin, each of which represents different strands of tradition: Persian rugs, Pakistani rugs, Arabian rugs, Anatolian rugs, Kurdish rugs, Caucasian rugs, Central Asian rugs, Turkestanian (Turkmen, Turkoman) rugs, Chinese rugs, Tibetan rugs and Indian rugs.
The Persian carpet or Persian rug is an essential and distinguished part of Persian culture and art, and dates back to ancient Persia. Persian carpets are classified by the social setting in which they were woven (nomads, villages, town and court manufactories), by ethnic groups (e.g. Kurds, nomadic tribes such as the Qashqai or Bakhtiari; Afshari, Azerbaijani, Turkmens) and others, or by the town or province where carpets are woven, such as Heriz, Hamadan, Senneh, Bijar, Arak (Sultanabad), Mashhad, Isfahan, Kashan, Qom, Nain, and others. A technical classification for Persian carpets is based on material used for warps, wefts, and pile, spinning and plying of the yarn, dyeing, weaving technique, and aspects of finishing including the ways how the sides (selvedges) and ends are reinforced against wear.
Turkish carpets are produced mainly in Anatolia, including neighbouring areas. Carpet weaving is a traditional art in Anatolia, dating back to pre-Islamic times, and integrates different cultural traditions reflecting the history of Turkic peoples. Turkish carpets form an essential part of the Turkish culture.
Amongst Oriental rugs, the Turkish carpet is distinguished by particular characteristics of dyes and colours, designs, textures and techniques. Usually made of wool and cotton, Turkish carpets are tied with the Turkish, or symmetrical knot. The earliest known examples for Turkish carpets date from the thirteenth century. Distinct types of carpets have been woven ever since in workshops, in more provincial weaving facilities, as well as in villages, tribal settlements, or by nomads. Carpets were simultaneously produced for these different levels of society, with varying materials like sheep wool, cotton, and silk. Pile woven as well as flat woven carpets (Kilim, Soumak, Cicim, Zili) have attracted collectors' and scientists' interest. Following a decline which began in the second half of the nineteenth century, initiatives like the DOBAG Carpet Initiative in 1982, or the Turkish Cultural Foundation in 2000, started to revive the traditional art of Turkish carpet weaving by using hand-spun, naturally-dyed wool and traditional designs.[101]
The Turkish carpet is distinct from carpets of other provenience in that it makes more pronounced use of primary colours. Western Anatolian carpets prefer red and blue colours, whereas Central Anatolian use more red and yellow, with sharp contrasts set in white. With the exceptions of representative court and town manufacture designs, Turkish carpets make more pronounced use of bold geometric, and highly stylized floral patterns, generally in rectilinear design.
Under the Mamluk Sultanate in Egypt, a distinctive carpet was produced in Egypt. Called "Damascene" carpets by previous centuries, there is no doubt now that the center of production was Cairo.[103] In contrast to nearly all other oriental rugs, Mamluk carpets used “S” (clockwise) spun and “Z” (anti-clockwise)-plied wool. Their palette of colours and shades is limited to bright red, pale blue, and light green, blue and yellow are rarely found. The field design is characterized by polygonal medallions and stars and stylized floral patterns, arranged in a linear way along their central axis, or centralized. The borders contain rosettes, often alternating with cartouches. As Edmund de Unger pointed out, the design is similar to other products of Mamluk manufacture, like wood- and metal work, and book bindings, illuminated books and floor mosaics.[104] Mamluk carpets were made for the court, and for export, Venice being the most important market place for Mamluk rugs in Europe.[103]
After the 1517 Ottoman conquest of the Mamluk Sultanate in Egypt, two different cultures merged, as is seen on Mamluk carpets woven after this date. The Cairene weavers adopted an Ottoman Turkish design.[105] The production of these carpets continued in Egypt, and probably also in Anatolia, into the early 17th century.
The Caucasian provinces of Karabagh, Moghan, Shirvan, Daghestan and Georgia formed the northern territories of the Safavid Empire. In the Treaty of Constantinople (1724) and the Treaty of Gulistan, 1813, the provinces were finally ceded to Russia. Russian rule was further extended to Baku, Genje, the Derbent khanate, and the region of Talish. In the 19th century the main weaving zone of the Caucasus was in the eastern Transcaucasus south of the mountains that bisect the region diagonally, in a region which today comprises Azerbaijan, Armenia, and parts of Georgia. In 1990, Richard E. Wright claimed that ethnicities other than the Turk Azeri population "also practiced weaving, some of them in other parts of the Caucasus, but they were of lesser importance."[107] Russian population surveys from 1886 and 1897[108] have shown that the ethnic distribution of the population is extremely complex in the southern Caucasus. With regard to antique carpets and rugs, the weavers' identity or ethnicity remains unknown. Eiland & Eiland stated in 1998 that "it should not be taken for granted that the majority population in a particular area was also responsible for the weaving."[109] Thus, a variety of theories about the ethnic origin of carpet patterns, and a variety of classifications have been put forward, sometimes attributing one and the same carpet to different ethnic groups. The debate is still ongoing, and remains unresolved.
In 1728 the Polish Jesuit Thaddaeus Krusinski wrote that at the beginning of the seventeenth century Shah Abbas I of Persia had established carpet manufactories in Shirvan and Karabagh.[110] The Caucasian carpet weavers adopted Safavid field divisions and floral motifs, but changed their style according to their ancient traditions. Characteristic motifs include stylized Chinese dragons in the so-called “Dragon carpets”, combat scenes of tigers and stags, or floral motifs. The style is highly abstract to an extent that the animal forms become unrecognizable, unless compared to earlier Safavid animals and 16th century "vase style" carpets depicting the same motifs.[111] Among the most popular groups of Caucasian rugs are the “Star Kazak”[112][113] and “Shield Kazak” carpets.[114]
A precise classification of Caucasian rugs is particularly difficult, even compared to other types of oriental rugs. Virtually no information is available from before the end of the nineteenth century, when Caucasian rugs began to be exported in larger numbers. In the Soviet socialistic economy, carpet production was organized in industrial lines in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Daghestan and Georgia, which used standardized designs based on traditional motifs, provided on scalepaper cartoons by specialized artists.[39] In 1927, the Azerbaijani Carpet Association was founded as a division of the Azerbaijani Art Association. At their factories, wool and cotton were processed and handed out to the weavers, who had to join the association.[115] The Azerbaijani scholar Latif Karimov wrote[115] that between 1961 and 1963, a technical college devoted to teaching carpet weaving was built, in 1961, the National Azerbaijan M.A. Aliev Institute of Art opened a department headed by Karimov, which specialized on the training of carpet designers.
Detailed ethnographic information is available from the works of ethnologists like Vsevolod Miller and Soviet Russian surveys conducted by the Institute of Anthropology and Ethnography (cited in[116]) However, during the long period of industrial production, the connection between specific designs and their ethnic and geographic origins may have been lost. Research was published mainly in Russian language, and still is not fully available to non-Russian speaking scientists.[115] From a Western perspective, when scientific interest started to develop in Oriental rugs by the end of the nineteenth century, the Caucasian regions, being part of the Soviet Union, closed up to the West. Thus, Western information about carpet weaving in the Caucasian countries was not as detailed as from other regions of the "carpet belt".[112]
Different classifications have been proposed, however, many trade names and labels have been kept merely as terms of convenience, and future research may allow for more precise classification.[117][118]
More recently, archival research from earlier Russian and Soviet sources has been included,[119] and cooperations were initiated between Western and Azerbaijani expe
Kuba relates to a district and its town, located between Baku and Derbent, the Samur river constituting its northern, the southern crest of the Caucasus its southern border.Kuba borders the Baku district in the southeast, and the Caspian Sea n the east. Kuba rugs are classified as town rugs, with dense ornamentation, high knot density, and short pile. Warps are made of wool, not dyed and dark ivory. Wefts are of wool, wool and cotton, or cotton. One of two wefts is often deeply depressed. Knots are symmetrical. Plain-woven Soumakh ends of dark wool or light blue cotton are frequent, white cotton soumakhs are rare. The fringes are braided, pleated, or artistically knotted. The selvedges are mainly round (in that case, in dark blue wool) or 0.3–1 cm wide and made of light blue wool, reinforced over two ribs by figure-of-eight wrapping with supplemental threads. The colours are dark and the rugs look hardly polychrome despite the fact that they use 10–12 different colours, because their ornaments are small and arranged densely on the rug. The majority of Kuba rugs have a dark blue background. Red or dark red rarely occur, sometimes ivory, rarely yellow and hardly any green.
Shirvan is the name of the town and province, located on the western coast of the Caspian Sea, east of the Kura river, between the southern part of the river and the city of Derbent in the north. Kerimov distinguished six districts, which weave different types of rugs. Some Shirvan rugs come with a high knot density and short pile. More coarsely woven carpets have a higher pile. Symmetrical knots are used, woven with alternate warps depressed. The weft is generally of wool, in dark ivory to brown. The ends are flat-woven, light cotton or wool sumakh. The fringes are sometimes artistically knotted. The selvedges are either round, or 0.5–1 cm wide, in white cotton, with 2–3 ribs in figure-of-eight wrapping with supplemental threads. White cotton selvedges are the most common in Shirvan rugs. Shirvan rugs may have town, or village designs, but less densely ornamented as compared to Kuba rugs, and the drawing is more sparse. Compared to Kuba rugs, Shirvan rugs are lighter, and more colourful, with a dark blue background. The borders often have a light background which is more sparsely ornamented compared to the central field. Light ivory, red or yellow rarely occur. Ivory is mainly used for prayer rugs.
Gyanya (Genje) is a large city, located ca. 360 kilometres (220 miles) west of Baku.In contrast to the more urban design of Kuba and Shirvan, rugs from other provenances have longer piles. On average, the pile of Gyanya rugs is 6–15 mm high. The warp is generally darker, mainly wool, not dyed dark or light brown. Camel hair is said to be used for warps as well. Wefts are commonly dyed light to dark brownish red. Three wefts are often shot in after each row of knots, but warps are not depressed. The upper end is often 2–6 cm (0.79–2.36 in) long brownish-red tapestry weave, turned over and sewn on. The lower end is frequently red woolen tapestry weave, with the warp loops uncut. Selvedges are rarely round, but flat and wide, mainly dark brownish red, and consist of three ribs with figure-of-eight wrapping with supplemental threads. The second most common shape is similar, but includes only two ribs. Gyanya rugs are more generously and sparsely ornamented, as compared to Kuba and Shirvan weavings. Large square, rectangular, hexagonal and octagonal patterns are set within more open space. Medallions (gul) are often hooked. The colour palette is more restricted than in Kuba and Shirvan rugs, but distributed over larger areas, so that the overall impression is more colourful.
Kazak according to Latimov refers to a district and its center town located between the borders of the Azerbaijan Republic towards the northwest into the Republic of Georgia and towards the southwest into the Republic of Armenia. The city of Kasak lies 460 kilometres (290 miles) west of Baku. The warp of Kazak rugs is of sheep wool, not dyed, rather dark ivory, sometimes camel hair is said to be used. The weft is of wool, or a blend of wool and camel hair. Sometimes wool and cotton threads are only slightly plied together to form the warp thread. Wefts are dyed mostly in light red, wefts in dark blue distinguish the Kazak from Karabakh rugs. 2–6 wefts are shot in after each row of knots. The pile is wool, sometimes undyed camel hair, the knots being symmetrical, the warps not depressed. Kazak rugs are woven more coarsely, their pile being 1–2 cm high. The upper end is fastened with a 1–4 cm wide woolen tapestry weave in red colours. The lower end is often finished like the upper end, but uncut warp loops are often seen protruding from the flat-woven end. Selvedges are nearly always flat nd between 1–2 cm wide, consisting of two ribs in figure-of-eight wrapping with supplemental threads, these often in different colours. In most cases, two double warps are wrapped three times. Kazak rugs have a limited colour palette of 5–7 colours. In general, the field has a red background, less frequently also ivory, green, blue, or yellow, the colour of the main border often in contrasting colours. The colour of the main borders is often difficult to identify due to the dense ornamentation. Kazak rugs woven before ca. 1910 have more intense and bright colours than rugs woven after this year.
Karabagh extends between the rivers Kura and Araz up to the mountains of the small Caucasus. The rugs woven in the different regions of the Karabagh area differ substantially from each other. Rugs from the easternmost parts of the Karabagh area have cotton wefts and light blue cotton or wool selvedges. In some regions (Mokan, Talysh, Lenkoran) the rugs have runner formats, approximately three times as long as wide. Apart from manufacture rugs, Karabagh rugs have a high pile, up to 2 cm. According to Karimov, some types of rugs like the "Eagle Kazak", Cloud band Kazak, or Kasymushak Kazaks, have actually been woven in Karabagh. Their upper and lower ends are often fllat-woven, folded towards the back, and sewn on.
Nakhichevan is located between Armenia and Iran. No information was available on this region to the authors of this classification.
Turkmen tribes inhabited the area between the Amu Darya river, the Caspian Sea, Aral Sea and towards the borders of modern-time Iran and Afghanistan. They produced rugs and smaller pile woven textiles in various sizes, including main carpets (halı), tent door hangings (ensi), and other household items like tent door decorations (khalyk or kapunuk), tent bags (torba), large bags (chuval), smaller bags (mafrash), saddle bags (Khordjin), animal covers (asmalyk), and tent bands.
Many archaic components of Turkmen representative arts have survived into the early twentieth century.[57] The original Turkmen were an ancient, Iranian-speaking ethnicity in the western Central Asian steppes and oases. Their military administrative organization in tribes was traced back to the influence of the Huns.([120] cited in[121]) Turkish influence came with the Hephthalite Empire in the sixth century AD, and, to a larger extent, by the immigration of the Oghuz Turks in the ninth and tenth century AD. The Oghuz assimilated the local population, who converted to Islam.[121] The Mongol invasion of the thirteenth century AD led to the destruction of the cities and agricultural irrigation systems, and reduced the Turkmen people to a nomadic lifestyle which they have kept throughout their later history, living at the borders of more powerful states like the Persian Empire, the Khwarazmian dynasty, and the Khanate of Bukhara. Less amenable to assimilation than their neighbours, they were able to preserve much of their traditional culture. During the nineteenth century, the Turkmen came under the influence of the Russian Empire. With the end of the Soviet Union, the former Turkmen socialist republic turned into the independent state of Turkmenistan.
The history of the Turkmen tribes is characterized by migrations, alliances, intertribal warfare, even by the violent extinction of regional populations. Knowledge of both the history of a Turkmen tribe and its migrations, and the characteristics of their structure and design, often allows for the attribution of a rug or pile-woven household item to a certain tribe, and to a certain period in its history. The diversity of the colours and ornaments, as well as their potential symbolic meaning, constitutes the subject of a large, sometimes controversial, body of research.[122][123]
Typical for nomadic weaving, the wool of Turkmen rugs is of high quality, with a fairly long pile. Sheep wool, goat's hair and cotton are used for the foundation. The pile is made from wool, and often also contains silk. The predominant colour in nearly all Turkmen rugs is madder red, which was obtained locally, and allows for dyeing in various shades. The different tribes used distinct shades of red. The predominance of the red colour in Turkmen rugs creates a monotonous impression on first sight, but the minor ornaments are woven in a great variety of colours. The most prominent ornament in Turkmen rugs is the gul, a medallion-like polygonal pattern which is arranged in rows all over the field. Specific gul were used as tribal emblems in a heraldic manner.[89] Generally, main (termed “göl”[89]), and secondary, less elaborate gul (termed “gül”[89]) can be distinguished, “gul” being the more generic name for this type of ornament. Gul were also used depending on the type of rug or household item. Main carpets usually display the main göl of the tribe, whereas tent door covers and bags show special gul.[57]
Primary göl in Turkmen rugs include:[123][124]
Gülli or gushli göl: Lobed göl which includes a square ornament, from which tre-foiled ornaments on a stem protrude. Used by the Tekke, Salor and Ersari, and by some weavers of the Saryk. “Gülli” means "flower" in Turkmen, “gushli” (from “kush” or “gush”) means “bird”.
Tauk-Nuska göl: Divided into four quarters in diagonally opposed colours, each quarter shows two stylized animals. Common in many tribes, it is mainly used by Arabachi, Chodor, some groups of the Yomud and Ersari including the Kizil Ayak.
Tekke göl: Design variation of the gülli göl. Round shape set on the coordinates of a dark blue lattice, which divides each gül into four sections with diagonally opposed colours.
Saryk göl: Similar to the Tekke göl, but not arranged on a lattice framework. Often seen on Saryk main carpets, also called Chuval göl because of its use on large bags (chuval).
Dyrnak göl - literally: “Comb göl”. Rhomboid göl adorned with rows of hooks, resembling combs, opposite rows of hooks are in the same colour. Used by the Yomud tribe
Kepse göl: Used mainly by the Yomud tribe, rhomboid göl surrounded by two-coloured crenellations.
Eagle göl: At least two, if not three groups of rugs are distinguished by this design feature, which has not yet been attributed to any specific tribe.
"C" göls: Octagon within an octagon filled with patterns resembling the letter “C”.
Turkmen carpets can be woven with both symmetric, and asymmetric knots, open to the left and to the right. Irregular knots are also frequent, including missed warps, knots over three or four warps, single warp knots, or knots sharing one warp, are seen, both symmetric and asymmetric. Often warps are deeply depressed. Pile, warp and weft yarns are excellently balanced. The ratio between horizontal and vertical knots is frequently close to 1:1. Rugs woven in this manner are very dense and durable.[57]
The Salor confederation (consisting mainly of the Salor proper and Saryk) is believed to have lived originally in the Amu Darya valley, and the oases of southern Turkmenistan, including Merv. They used bright shades of madder red. The typical Salor göl has a lobed rosette shade, upright-cross division and motif-filling. Its four central quarters are dyed in diagonally opposed colours. The style of colouring is labelled “Central Asian”. The göl are arranged on the main field of a carpet in a way that makes them appear to “float” on the field, creating the impression of a diagonal movement.[57] A group of Turkmen carpets with common structural features were termed “S-group” and identified as Salor rugs by Mackie and Thompson.[78] The carpets of the “S-group” are asymmetrically knotted, open to the left. Warps are ivory, with alternate warps deeply depressed, wefts of two-ply brown wool, occasionally dyed red. Their pile is less supple than other Turkmen rugs, fairly long. Sometimes silk is used, but rarely cotton. Red colour is mostly from madder, but lac and cochineal reds have been found.[78] Older Saryk weavings often have symmetric knots.
Tekke rugs are distinguished by the use of the Tekke göl. They are asymmetrically knotted, almost always open to the right. Alternate warps are rarely deeply depressed. The red colours are dyed in madder, but also cochineal red can be found. In the nineteenth century, synthetic dyes have been used. Warps are often of ivory yarn with a large component of ivory goat's hair. The selvage is overcast in dark blue.[125] Yomud rugs are of a similar structure, with less depressed warps. The red field colour of Yomud rugs is more subdued with a brown hue. Knots are asymmetric, open to the left. Typical göl are dyrnak and kepse göl.[125] The most common field colour of Chaudor rugs is a purplish chestnut brown. White appears more prominently, also dark and light blue, green and yellow. The warps are made of dark wool, whereas the wefts include white cotton. Knotting is asymmetrical and open to the right, which helps distinguishing Chaudor from Yomud rugs. Tauk nuska göls are common in Chaudor rugs.[126]
Other carpet weaving tribes include the Arabatchi, Ersari and Beshiri.
