The term Oriental Rug has been used, overused and misused throughout the last few decades. Notice that suddenly, any carpet with a certain design pattern, whether handmade or factory produced is termed “Oriental carpet” by some companies.
Carpet outlets, furniture stores and even some large home improvement stores have been known to put out a carpet that ‘looks’ like an Oriental rug and just claim it as so. But Oriental rugs are much more than patterns or designs.
In this blog post we’d like to take a minute and define what is a real hand-made Oriental Rug:
- True Oriental rugs are made by hand and never produced in a factory. Mass factory produced carpets are not unique – the machines do a perfect job of duplicating a single pattern and we don’t like perfect, not in the rug business. Hand made carpets on the other hand, are imperfect and even if they seem to have the same design, each and every one of them is different. The beauty of the hand made carpet (or hand-knotted, or hand woven, however, you want to call it) is in its imperfection. Each carpet is a unique work of art or as we like to call it “Art on the floor”.
- By definition, Oriental rugs should genuinely come from an Asian country (that’s why there’s Orient in Oriental Rugs). Oriental rugs could be sub-divided into Middle East or Far East and the most well-known countries in the list for hand woven carpets would include India, Afganistan, Iran, Nepal, Tibet, Pakistan, Turkey and some southern regions of what used to be the former Soviet like Armenia and Azerbaijan.
Just to be on the safe side: “Wilton”®, “Karistan”® and “Couristan”® are nice rugs that are made by machines and have Oriental carpet designs. Please don’t confuse them with authentic “Oriental carpets”. Also know that no genuine Oriental rugs are made of nylon or polypropylene.
If you’re looking for a true Oriental rug, visit us at www.1800getarug.com where you will find a unique collection of beautiful handknotted rugs which is always up to date with color and design.
