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RugScapes: Area Rugs Resources
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Machine Made Area Rugs
Machine Made Area Rugs
How Machine-Made Rugs are Made
This website discusses how machine made rugs are made. They are woven on power looms operated either by hand, machine, or computer. The design and colors are determined, and a computer card is created which tells the computer which size and color it needs to produce. The loom is strung with a warp of jute, or sometimes cotton. The rug is then woven using wool, nylon, polypropylene, olefin, or any other yarn suitable. Wool is the most durable and easiest to clean, as well as the most expensive. Some of the common synthetic materials are olefin, which is resilient and if heat set, is not as shiny as many others; polypropylene, which tends to flatten more readily; and nylon which is generally less durable. All of the synthetics do not clean as well as wool, but can be more cost effective.
Is Your Rug Machine-Made?
This website offers tips to determine if your rug is machine made. Tips include if a rug has a nap of polypropolene, polyolefin, or a nap made of a blend of synthetic polymers and wool, it is all but certainly a machine-made rug. If a rug is identified as a Belgium Oriental, or as having been made in Belgium, Italy, or elsewhere in western Europe, it is all but certainly a machine-made rug. A tag on many machine-made rugs is shown for identification purposes.
Hand-made vs. Machine-made Rugs
This website discusses differences between hand-made and machine-made rugs. The author of the article is not in favor of machine-made rugs and says that comparing a hand-made rug to a machine-made rug is like comparing a Ferrari to a kit-car replica of a Ferrari. Rugs are the same way in that a machine-made rug may have a similar design as a real rug, but upon close inspection you will notice just how cheaply made most of them are, he says. Real hand-made rugs are made of either soft, dense wool or silk, both of which have an unmistakable feel. A machine-made rug may be made of a cheap blend of materials, and will definitely not feel as comfortable as the real thing. Genuine oriental rugs are composed of hundreds of thousands of hand-tied knots, and a relatively small 6'x9' rug will take anywhere from four to six months to complete. The incredible amount of labor and the cost of quality materials are part of the reason real oriental rugs are so expensive, whereas a machine-made rug can be made in an hour or so.
History of Machine-made Rugs
This site offers a history of the rug industry. Specifically, machine-made rug history is available. Industrialist/retailer Marshall Field had a traditional Axminster weaving loom modified to create what no one else had ever created—a machine-made rug woven through the back, just like a handmade Oriental, featuring intricate designs and virtually unlimited color variety. Karastan's rug mill was established in 1926, and introduced the first Karastan rugs to the public in 1928.
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