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Oriental Rug Designs
Designs are taken from nature, mountains,
animals, the sky, plants and imaginative design. Today the designs are
done on graphic paper .The carpet weavers construct the rug by following
the pattern. The person weaving a nomad rug may well raise the sheep,
shear,
spin and dye the wool, as well as design and weave the rug. Most
nomadic rugs use geometrical motifs common to their particular ethnic
heritage. In these communities, where women are the weavers, carpets are
woven as treasures to be dowry pieces or to mark the birth of a child.
Country rugs are
usually woven of locally available material.Many Rug Weavers,for instance
, use cotton for the warp and weft of the rugs they make (cotton is less
elastic than wool, and it is easier to weave a straight and flat rug on
cotton foundation).Country rugs are often less tightly knotted than city
rugs. Typically,their designs are more simply drawn,and are often hold and
geometrical designs
Semi-nomadic pastoraalists like some Balouch and Afghan, however, use wool
for their warp and weft because they do not produce cotton themselves.
Country rugs often use fewer colors (five or six) than city rugs, and some
country rugs still use vegetable dyes like madder and indigo.
City rugs are often more self-conscious rugs:
The weaver is making the rug to sell, and so chooses colors and design not
so much on the basis of what is traditional, but on what is likely to sell
in the market.
City rugs are often the product of very specialized labor. Where as the
country weaver might build the loom, prepare and dye the wool, decide on
the design, and weave and wash the rug, these functions are usually
performed by different people in the city. Often there is an entrepreneur
who hires designers, graphic makers, dyers, weavers, and washers to make
especially high quality rugs, rugs which would take too long to weave and
involve too much investment for a weaver working all alone.
The City rugs are often very tightly knotted with very intricate patterns
of many colors (more than ten) There is a lincage between the number of
knots per sq in in the rug and the thickness of the pile: if a rug is very
tightly knotted with an intricate design, the weaver usually clips the nap
short so that the pattern appears better.
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