The History of Rug Making

Origins

• Nomadic tribes of Central Asia may have developed the first rugs when they realized they could use the hair of their sheep and goats to make floor coverings, rather than killing their livestock and using their fur for carpets. Egyptian monuments from the 21st century B.C. depict women weaving on looms. The first rugs were either flat-woven on a loom, or hand-knotted--a method in which weavers tied yarn around the long threads of the rug's foundation, and which could take a year or longer to make an area rug.

The Pazyryk Rug

• The oldest hand-knotted rug in existence is the Pazyryk Rug. It was discovered in 1949 by Russian archaeologists, in a tomb of a Scythian chief on a Siberian mountain. Because it was covered in permafrost, it was preserved. The tombs were 2,400-2,500 years old. The rug, now in a museum in Leningrad, has 232 knots per square inch. Other hand-knotted rugs generally range from 25 to 100 knots per square inch.

Persian and Turkish Rugs

• The Persian rug is widely considered to have reached its peak, design-wise, during the Safavid dynasty of the 16th and 17th centuries. Marco Polo remarked upon the beauty of Turkish rugs in the 13th century. Weaving had been introduced to Turkey at the end of the 11th century. Italian merchants brought Turkish rugs to Europe in the 14th century. In 1891, Sultan Abdullhamid II expanded the Hereke workshops, creating a mini-boom in Turkish carpet production.

European Rug Making

• During the Middle Ages, the Saracens and Crusaders brought Oriental rugs to Europe. Spain was the first European country to begin producing hand-knotted rugs. The French started making flat-woven rugs that featured ornate flowers in pastel colors. These were called Aubusson rugs after the town where they were made. Seventeenth century Paris was the center of production for savonneries, or deep-pile rugs. Belgium and England began producing rugs during the 18th century. Joseph-Marie Jacquard of France invented the jacquard loom in 1800. This loom facilitated the weaving of extremely intricate rugs.

Rug Making in the US

• W.P. Sprague opened the first American carpet factory in 1791, in Philadelphia. The power loom was invented in 1841 in Lowell, Massachusetts, and was steam-powered. It produced flat-weave carpets. Its inventor, Erastus Brigham Bigelow, then made a machine that could produce rugs with looped pile. High-speed tufting began to be used in the 1920s, and carpet knitting in 1951. Both these rug-manufacturing methods could produce more rugs more quickly. After World War II, the US became the world's leading rug producer. The Middle East, however, still produced the most handmade rugs. Around 1950, the first synthetic-fiber rugs were produced. These rugs were more durable and stain-resistant, but, some say, not as beautiful as wool, silk or cotton rugs.