Carpets and Rugs

History of Making Carpets and Rugs

Overview:

Carpets and rugs were once reserved for royalty, kings, chieftains, and other people of high honor. Rugs were used as awnings over thrones of the ancient Assyrian kings and Persian emperors. European kings spread carpets in front of thrones which provided a barrier from nobles.  Fine rugs were often displayed in front of church altars.

There really is no difference between rugs and carpets. The use of either was a sign of importance in antiquity. In modern language we refer to a scolding as being called on the carpet as an old expression from long ago when a carpet marked the place of people who had authority. Today most homes use carpets and rugs in different ways; to protect flooring, to add color to a room, or for wall decorations. 

A Brief History of Making Carpets and Rugs:

Weaving was one of the first arts that came to primitive man. The technique of weaving may have come from early civilization noticing how the roots of trees were intertwined and got the idea to weave baskets. Animal hair was made into felt by wetting and pounding them with a stone. Vines and grasses were braided and weaved together to form rope, and reeds were made into straw mats and grass rugs.

The Eskimos made mats from similar material as did the American Indians. They wove them from rushes and from a twine made of twisted nettle bark. In the Pacific Islands, the natives used rattan in a similar way.  

Later the hair of some animals were twisted or spun into a strong woolen thread and hairy plants were spun into cotton, linen and other types of threads. Soon after the loom was invented to weave these threads.

The Navajo Indians and some weavers of the Middle East still use this early primitive loom for making blankets and rugs. A row of many threads stretched up and down is called the warp. Another thread called the weft, or woof, moves across these in and out, over one and under the next, left to right, then back again, right to left, building a flat cloth row by row.

The weave can be fine and thin or thick enough for a strong rug. This is called the basket weave. The completed fabric may be made livelier by adding stripes or simple patterns by using threads of different colors. Rugs made this way are often done in complicated patterns and are referred to as tapestry rugs.

A much finer weave is called a pile carpet. It is woven by winding little knots of thread upon pairs of warp threads, clear across the rug and clipping the ends of each knot. Row after row of these short tufts made a velvety surface, or pile, sometimes coarse and shaggy, sometimes finished smooth, and with many colored patterns.

In Sweden the word rug simply meant “entangled hair”. Romans had rugs of felt with embroidered designs and the Chinese made them more than one thousand years ago. In modern time small rugs of felt with colored flower embroidery are still made in India.

The home of the pile carpet was Turkestan, in the heart of Asia. Nomad tribes still live in this large lonely land north of Iran, Pakistan, and India and they still make carpets and rugs in the traditional hand weaving way. While men tend the flocks, women weave all the carpets. Sheep wool makes the finest carpets. They also use the hair of the goats and camels. They use mainly dyes made from plants for their rich colors.

The ancient tribal carpet making industry of Iran was just about decimated during the Iranian and Iraq war of the last century. Many of the tribes migrated to Turkey where they still continue to make beautiful carpets and rugs.

Through many centuries the nomads of the world have spread their art over the all the continents, from China to Turkey and Persia, and to the west. Different cultures learned to make finer carpets in very elegant designs.

In modern time we use these carpets and rugs to decorate our homes as floor covering, accent carpets, and wall decoration and from time to time we still get "called on the carpet".

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