How Oriental Rugs Are Made

steamers-carpet-oriental-rugIn early June 2013, a beautiful 17th century oriental rug sold for the most expensive price in history: 34 million dollars. A pretty crazy amount of money for something we just put under our feet. However, oriental rugs transcend their role as a simple floor decoration and they become something much more. We might hang them on our walls to look at to feel a sense of peace and harmony. The nature of the oriental rug is artistic. The process of creating an oriental rug is a magnificent feat of human achievement and artistry. Each step in the process requires highly trained professionals and age-old technology.

How Oriental Rugs Are Made

A single oriental rug takes months of work by multiple people. First you have to make the thread: wool from a selected breed of sheep is stripped and hand woven into thread. Then the hand-woven wool is dyed by a master dyer using only natural products. These products, instead of artificial ones, require a more skillful eye to get the yarn just the right color, so dyers have to go through years of training before they can do the job. So not only does the yarn have to be hand-woven, but the dyes also have to be made from these natural resources before you even have the materials to make the rug.

Next, artists draw up “cartoons” or the designs for the rug. They draw them on graph paper so that their designs can be geometric to conform to the loom’s capabilities. The cartoons are all checked by other artists to make sure the master weavers can understand the design. A whole carpet is not drawn out entirely, but enough so the patterns and designs are understood throughout the carpet, but literally there are artists who sit in a room just drawing up these beautiful designs that we then walk all over. Pretty crazy to think about.

After the wool is dyed and the cartoons are drawn, a loom is “warped” meaning long lines of undyed threads (warp threads) are tied extremely tight from one end of the loom to the other. The colored wool is tied to the warped threads starting from the bottom of the rug, all the way to the top.

After months of weaving, the professional weavers finally finish this major step in production, but that’s not where it stops! The rug has to be trimmed for any loose threads. This process is dangerous because if the trimmer slips up, she or he can ruin the whole rug! Finally, the carpet has to be stretched in the sun and ironed out for wrinkles which requires another group of professionals and more time. Lastly, it gets one final trim and is ready to ship out and be sold.

Here is a video that goes in depth in the process of making an oriental rug. This was just a short skim over the various steps of the process. The weaving itself takes months but now you can see just how many people and how much effort goes into your oriental rug.

Taking Care of Your Oriental Rug

Maybe you have a rug that you would like to sell for 34 million dollars one day. You might have to wait a few centuries, but more importantly, you’ll need to maintain the rug and keep it clean. Here at Steamer’s Carpet Care we respect the artistry that goes into each oriental rug and we want to ensure that the value you hold in your oriental rug never fades. We will even come to your house and pick it up, clean it off site, and bring it back to you, with the loving, tender care that your rug deserves. Call us today and let us make your oriental rug look fresh off the loom.