Best Area Rugs

 

Machine-made rugs are not actually knotted. A machine puts the wool into place, and then is held in place with latex backing. This makes the back rough to the touch and creates a grid appearance on the back of the rug. Creating a rug one knot at a time allows the design to be more elaborate and consequently takes much longer to produce than a machine-made one. The result is better rug density and a tighter, higher quality of weave. A finely woven rug will have over 180 hand tied knots per square inch. An experienced rug maker will be able tie about 800 knots an hour (a 9 x 12 rug takes over 3,500 hours of labor); this is why they are so expensive to produce.

When looking for a quality hand-knotted rug, inspect the quality of the wool look at the length, the springiness and the luster of the wool fiber. When evaluating rug quality the thickness of the rug does not matter. When you flip over the rug the image of the rug's frontal design should be clear. A rug that has a design that is less defined on the reverse side has not been as tightly knotted. Finer knots indicate higher quality.

But even hand-knotted rugs come in a variety of different qualities. One of the fastest-growing types of rug falls between hand-knotted and machine-made it is called handgun-tufted. The handgun forces the yarns into a grid, and then the backs are covered with latex or a fabric backing. This makes the process much faster than hand knotting, but still maintains the handcrafted look.