Home | Oriental Rug Guide Page
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This BALOUCH is a "country" rug. Handspun wool pile |
Country rugs are often less tightly knotted than city rugs. Typically,
their designs are more simply drawn, and are often bold and geometric.
Country rugs are usually woven of locally available materials. Many weavers,
for instance, use cotton for the warp and weft of the rugs they make (cotton
is less elastic than wool, and it is easier to weave a straight and flat
carpet on cotton foundation). Semi-nomadic pastoralists like some Balouch and
Afghans, however, use wool for their warp and weft because they do not produce
cotton themselves.
Country rugs often use fewer colors (five or six) than city rugs, and some country rugs still use vegetable dyes like madder and indigo.
City Rugs...
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This very fine ISFAHAN from Iran Fine machine-spun wool pile |
Cities are amalgamations of people from many different areas,
and weavers working in urban areas have the chance to see many different
kinds of rug designs and qualities.
City rugs are often more self-conscious rugs: the weaver is making
the rug to sell, and so chooses colors and design not so much on the basis
of what is traditional, but on what is likely to sell in the market.
City rugs are often the product of very specialized labor. Whereas the
country weaver might build the loom, prepare and dye the wool, decide on
the design, and weave and wash the rug, these functions are usually performed
by different people in the city. Often there is an entrepreneur who hires
designers, graph makers, dyers, weavers, and washers to make especially
high quality carpets, rugs which would take too long to weave and involve too
much investment for a weaver working all alone.
These City rugs are often very tightly knotted with very intricate patterns of many colors (more than ten). There is a linkage between the number of knots per sq. in. in the rug and the thickness of the pile: if a rug is very tightly knotted with an intricate design, the weaver usually clips the nap short so that the design renders with maximum clarity. Fine City rugs are often closely clipped.
