An Oriental rug is a hand knotted rug or carpet made in the East using traditional techniques and materials. Oriental-style rugs made by machine, hand-tufted, hand-loomed or any method other than hand-knotting are not authentic Oriental rugs.
The traditional art of Oriental weaving can accurately be dated as far back as the 5th Century BC. The first known Oriental rugs came from Persia (Iran), Turkey, Egypt, the Caucasus and Central Asia. The traditional art of rug weaving is still carried on today using relatively the same methods and materials used over 2,000 years ago. Oriental rugs take their name from the country of origin and in most cases are further categorised by the area, town or village the rug came from.
The Loom
All Oriental rugs are made on a loom this can be as basic as the horizontal loom where two beams of timber are staked into the ground with warps wrapped around them under tension. These looms are used extensively by Nomadic tribes, as the looms are easy to construct from locally sourced timber, the straightness of the timber used will dictate how straight or crooked the final rug will be and how it will lie on the floor. When the weaver decides to move on, the stakes can be removed, the unfinished rug rolled onto its beams and loaded on a pack animal for transportation. When the new camp is reached the loom can be unrolled and re staked into the ground ready to start weaving.
The upright loom has a few variations,
Village looms have a fixed warp and is little more than an upright version of the horizontal loom. As weaving progresses the weaver must be raised higher to complete the rug, the weaver sits on a plank between two ladders on either side of the loom which is raised until the rug is completed. The diagram shows a simple village loom. All looms are equipped with a simple mechanism called a heddle rod, leash rod or shed stick which enables the weaver to separate alternate warps strings into two sets or leaves to create a channel or shed between the leaves into which the weaver can reach in to draw the weft through after each weft is inserted the weaver crosses the two leaves.
Roller beam looms are possibly the most widely used looms throughout the Oriental rug industry today. Usually made of metal with a mechanism for tensioning and relaxing the warps, both the upper and lower beams turn in a socket, as the weaving proceeds the tension of the loom can be relaxed and re tensioned to enable the finished part of the rug to be wound around the lower beam. Fresh warps are simultaneously unwound from the upper beam. Using this type of loom rugs of any length can be woven.
The Knotting Technique of Oriental Rugs
The loom is strung with vertical threads called warps - this can be cotton, wool or silk. In the majority of Oriental rugs this will be cotton, although in tribal rugs this will almost certainly be wool. A knot is created by tying a strand of wool around two adjacent rows of warp. Each knot is tied and individually cut by hand using various colours to create a design.
The design is created one row at a time, after a row of knots has been completed a weft, sometimes two or more are inserted in between each warp on top of the row of knots. These are then beaten down with a comb beater and the yarn ends are cut to the full width of the rug with a pair of shears.
There are various ways of knotting the pile yarn around the warp strands. There are two main types of knot in the Middle East. The Persian knot and the Turkish knot, the names can be misleading as the map shows the Turkish knot is used to the West (Left) of the dotted line and the Persian knot to the East (Right).
The Persian Knot
The Persian knot is also called the Senneh knot or the Asymmetrical knot .This knot is less bulky than the Turkish knot, can create better curves and finer designs. The knot can be tied on one level or two levels as shown.
The Turkish Knot
The Turkish knot is also called the Ghiordes knot or Symmetrical knot. As with the Persian knot it can be tied on one level or two levels.
The Weavers Tools
The weaver uses only three simple tools which are essential to produce a rug, these are a knife to cut the yarn once the knot has been tied, a comb beater to compact the weft and a pair of shears for trimming the yarns. There are some variations on these basic tools.
A skilled weaver can tie around 6,000 knots per day but it must be noted that tribal and village weaving is done around the normal day to day activities of looking after the family and tending the animals and land, this output may drop to 2,500 knots per day or less depending on the time of year An average knot count of 64 knots per inch or 8x8 will have approximately 221,000 knots in a 180 x 120 rug. This will take between 37 days and 90 days to make. This does not include the wool preparation time, clipping, sorting, carding, spinning and dyeing. After the rug is made it has to be washed clipped and finished. In some cases the rugs are left in the sun for months to mellow the colours naturally.
The process of rural weaving, be it village production or tribal weaving, is exactly the same as urban weaving in factories and workshops, however the fundamental difference is the how the design is created and transposed into a finished rug.
In our next article on Oriental rugs we will take a closer look at Oriental rug design, its origins and techniques.
