To judge a fine hand-knotted oriental rugs correctly, they must be looked at from several points of view or from two aspects, against the light and with the light, with the pile and into the pile. The rug will look darker looking into the pile and lighter when looking with the direction of the pile. In other words, a rugs sheen and overall appearance should be judged by walking around it and considering it from various lights and directions.
If you look at fine oriental rugs in the light of wisdom, you will see the richest and softest of colors, the most harmonious shadings and blendings of color, medallions brilliant as jewels, or geometrical designs as beautiful as the rose windows of a cathedral. You’ll also see graceful combinations of charmingly conventionalized flowers, delicate traceries, and arabesques … All displaying new glories of ever changing and never tiring beauty.
A wonderful aspect of fine hand-knotted oriental rugs from a sensory point of view, is each oriental rug or woven picture, is soft to tread on as a closely mown lawn, and caresses the feet that sink into its pile. These are all oriental rugs as their admirers know and love them.
Some oriental rugs are so beautiful and so intricate that they are in museums or in the hands of collectors who hold them tightly and securely. You don’t see any other type of floor covering that is in museums and in the hands of collectors. These are the rare specimens. They are individually hand-knotted works of art.
The very word “Persian” is a synonym for opulence, splendor, gorgeousness … and “Oriental” means beauty, wonder … and the magic of the “Arabian Nights.”
In order to appreciate the beauty of oriental rugs, it is helpful to remember how they are made, and with what infinite patience the bits of wool are knotted on to the warp one after another, knot upon knot and tie after tie, until the perfect piece is finished.
Materials in Fine Hand-Knotted Oriental Rugs
Regarding the wool in rugs, it may be generally said that the best wool is from the younger sheep, and the silkiness and sheen of the wool give those same characteristics to the rug.
Silk rugs, both antique and modern really dazzle the eye with their beauty. But the person who can afford one also needs to be able to afford to furnish the surroundings for it in the same magnificence. Otherwise, everything else grows pale and dull beside the fantastic beauty of these rugs.
The Dyeing of the Yarn for Fine Hand-Knotted Oriental Rugs
The dye, the tone, the richness, and color value of a rug wise, and still it is, an essential characteristic of the weaving of each class and region; and it was formally, not only essential, but exclusive, that the dyes are often trade secrets or, more truly said, tribe secrets.
Far back in history, the coloring of the yarn of the best oriental rugs are derived only from vegetable or animal dies, and to this aspect, their beauty and durability are due.
Even though the yarn is made of wool, it is the yarn that is dyed, and not the wool, being that the wool is spun into yarn.
Now modern weavers have learned to substitute mineral or aniline dyes. However, the old natural method of using vegetable dyes has historically given the richness, depth, and luster to these phenomenal works of art. Historically, some vegetable dyes fade, but they fade only into softer and more pleasing shades, and more delicate and harmonious blendings, as can be witnessed in many antiques where the soft and beautiful tones of paint, salmon, and fawn which have come from raw magentas, as the back of the rug will often prove. But, that type of magentas dye was from the old school.
The Method of Weaving for Fine Hand-Knotted Oriental Rugs
The warp or vertical yarns are stretched on a crude wooden frame, and this warp is either wool, linen, or cotton.
The knotting is begun at the bottom and worked from right to left. A bit of woolen yarn about two inches long is deftly and skillfully twisted between the strands of the warp, then tied in a secure knot , and the ends are left as they are. This knot of yarn is then secured in place by one or more twists of the end of the warp, and then another knot of yarn is tied in the process repeated until the bottom row is finished and another row begun. Not until the rug is completely made are that ends of the knots cut, according to the length of nap that is desired.
When one square inch of rug is completed, according to the quality of the rug and the coarseness or fineness of the yarn, there will have been laboriously tied, from one hundred to five hundred knots, and even a thousand or more knots in some museum pieces.
All this while the weaver is working with his or her brains as well as his or her fingers and keeping true to the design and color scheme, which they carry most of the time in their heads.