How is the structure of a luxury rug made?

Understanding how the structure of a luxury rug is made helps not only to understand the long and laborious process that leads to the creation of a high-design rug, but it also provides valuable insights into the origin of the product and the quality of its workmanship.

Discovering the heart of a luxury carpet

The workmanship of a luxury rug is a rather lengthy process, consisting of several stages. For the largest and most elaborate carpets, we are talking about months of daily work. However, the time it takes to get to the finished product can vary greatly depending on the type of processing chosen.

The structure of a high quality rug changes depending on whether it is a hand-knotted rug, a woven rug or a tafted rug. The first on the list, which we will focus on today, represent the majority of cases and are made by knotting the yarns individually around a structure that acts as a guide. Woven carpets, on the other hand, use a simpler structure and have faster processing times due to the use of a loom. Finally, luxury knotted carpets are the quickest to make because the manual work is partly replaced by the use of an automatic gun, which fixes the yarn to a canvas.

The components of the structure of hand-knotted carpets

The structure of a hand-knotted luxury rug is usually composed of six components:

– The warp

– Weft

– The pile

– Knots

– Selvedges

– Bangs.

The warp is one of the fundamental components of a rug and is made up of a series of threads that are fixed vertically on a loom. In order to have a rug with a solid and lasting structure, it is necessary to use resistant fibers: for this reason wool and cotton are usually preferred for the warp.

The threads that make up the weft are also fixed on a frame, but in a horizontal direction. The weft is crossed with the warp to obtain a sort of grid, around which the knots will be fixed. In essence, the weft and warp represent the skeleton around which the luxury carpet will be made and will not be visible once the processing is completed. For the weft, the same material is used as for the warp. Only the length of the threads may change.

The pile represents the most superficial level of the carpet. It comes into play in the final stages of processing the product, when all the threads have been knotted and the product is shaved to even out the height of the threads and to give the greatest possible definition to the design.

The knotting phase is what allows the creation of a high quality luxury rug. Over time, two different knotting techniques have developed: one involves the use of a symmetrical knot, the other uses an asymmetrical knot. These two techniques became popular among Turkish and Persian craftsmen, respectively. And that’s why we also talk about Turkish knot or Persian knot. Especially when dealing with antique rugs, being able to recognize the type of knot used provides an important clue as to the origin of the rug. At this stage, you can use the yarn you prefer: wool, silk, cotton or other fibers of vegetable origin.

The selvedge is the element of the carpet that constitutes the end of the warp, on which no knots are attached. Simplifying, we could identify the selvedges with the outer edge of the carpet without bangs.

The bangs are an element present only in some cases. They are the end of the warp threads that remain visible. To prevent knots from unraveling, the ends of the warp are knotted so that the rug has a compact and strong structure. The remaining threads can be left as they are, or they can be braided or rolled up. In luxury rugs without bangs, the warp threads that remain after the knotting is finished are simply cut off.

How to recognize a quality luxury rug by its structure?

Analyzing the structure of the carpet is useful to recognize its origin, but also to get an idea of its quality. There are several evaluations that can be made: the regularity of the pile, for example, gives an indication of the precision with which the carpet has been worked and finished.

It is equally important to check the solidity of the knots. The number of knots per square centimeter is a rather reliable parameter to evaluate the quality of the rug: the higher the number of knots, the better is generally the quality of the fibers used for the artifact.

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