Oriental Rug Weaving : Ancient Art
Lancaster Rug Company has an extensive gallery of over 8,000 first quality, Hand Knotted Persian Rugs & Oriental Carpets, each hand picked for quality and beauty, available for you to display in your home. Each of these masterpieces will add a sense of sophistication to your décor.
Persian Rug Weaving is an art that requires years of practice and masterful talent. It often takes the most skilled artists up to two years to create room-sized a Persian Rug, and you can see the intense passion a master weaver imbeds into their art when you observe the intricacies interwoven into the patterns.
How Hand Knotted Oriental Rugs are Made
The first thing that happens in the process is the creation of the Wool. Sheep are sheered and the wool is spun by hand, dyed by hand, and dried by hand. At this time, a 'cartoon' of the finished Oriental Rug is drawn for reference. The master weaver will reproduce the image in his or her mind as they tie each knot onto the foundation of the Hand Knotted Persian Rug. The loom is erected and adjusted to the proper size, and the warp threads are strung and pulled taught. This becomes the foundation of the rug that the weaver will knot onto, and eventually the top and bottom of this foundation will become the fringe of the Oriental Area Rug.
Now the step where the weacing of Oriental Carpets begins, as the artist visualizes the 'cartoon' to determine where each color begins and ends, he or she dexterously ties each thread accordingly, and slowly the rug is revealed. Once the knotting process is done, the rug is completed with a special knot, and trimmed so the pile is even. The trimming process is repeated several times, making the edges even and attractive. The rug is finally washed by hand and stretched to dry in the sun before exporting.
Oriental Carpets: Quality in Craftsmanship
Persain Rug weaving is a fading art; technology has sped up the process and made it possible to recreate a pattern exactly on several thousand rugs, so that each is identical and mass produced, cheap, and require little labor or expense. These rugs are much more profitable to the companies who make them, because while decreasing the costs of rug production significantly, the prices only need to be dropped by a small percentage to maximize sales, meaning the profit margin on a machine made rug is several hundred times higher than that of a handcrafted rug. Machine made rugs are much less durable than Hand Knotted Persian Rugs, needing to be replaced every couple years, and contribute to our waste problem. They are made with chemical dyes and glues, and they are in no way unique. While machine made rugs may be capturing the market, they will never capture the timeless craftsmanship, fascinating beauty, and cultural insights reflected in these hand knotted oriental carpets will last through the centuries.
Our Hand Knotted Oriental Rugs come from culture rich societies all over the world, including; Pakistan, Iran, China, India, Turkey, Afghanistan, Morocco, and more. The exotic cultures from these locations are infused in the motifs you will see in our Showroom. Each country we showcase is renowned for their Oriental Rug Patterns. We have a wide selection of Caucasian, Turkish, Persian, Pakistani, Indian, Chinese, Tibetan and Tribal patterns for you to choose from.
At any time we have several hundred patterns on hand. A few of the most popular patterns we carry include Herati Rugs, Ziegler Rugs, Agra Rugs, Tabriz Rugs, Kashan Rugs, Sarouk Rugs, Nain Rugs, Swat Rugs, Mogul (Mughal) Rugs, Isfahan Rugs, Heriz Rugs, Kilims, Oushak Rugs, Kazak and Tibetan Rugs, Hamadan Rugs, and many others.
To browse our Hand Knotted Oriental Rugs or learn more about how Oriental & Persian Carpets are made, we invite you to visit our Gallery at 1410 Oregon Pike, Lancaster, PA 17061. Call toll free at 1-855-GOT-RUGS (1-855-468-7847) or locally at (717) 295-9078. You can email us at info@lancasterrug.com. It is worth the drive!