This is always a good place to start if one is considering a purchase as just this information alone will give one clarification and insight into what one is seeking. As the countries in the East have always been considered the Orient, a hand woven rug, made from wool, silk or cotton, from this part of the world is the genuine article. A little further delineation could be made if one also added in Western Europe, Northern Africa and Russia. I have seen beautiful handmade rugs from Romania, Uzbekistan and Egypt as well as the Caucasus region between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea above Iran. The most famous rug weaving countries are Iran, Afghanistan, China, Pakistan, India and Turkey. This is a tradition that dates back thousands of years.
The oldest complete rug found in recent times was discovered in 1949 in a burial site of a Prince in the Pazarik Valley of the Altai Mountains in Siberia. It was frozen in permafrost for over 2500 years! The Pazyrk Carpet is permanently on display at the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg. You will find it depicted in the front of almost any rug book in living color. The rug scholars are still arguing as to where it was woven but the exact same weaving techniques are still in use today.
Oriental rugs are not made in the Unites States although we do produce many machine made copies. These would be classified as “Oriental design” rugs.
An average 9 x 12 hand woven rug takes a minimum of 3000 hours of weaving, to say nothing of the time spent on the design, dye preparation, spinning of the wool and the setting up of the loom.
A Persian rug is an Oriental rug but specifically woven in the country of Iran or if an antique (100 years old or more) woven in the former Persian Empire.
All Persian rugs ARE Oriental rugs but not all Oriental rugs are Persian rugs. Hopefully, that makes sense. Probably the reason for this classification is the fact that the Persian weavers of the past were always leaders in design and quality. Proof of this can be found in any major museum in the world and is evidenced most thoroughly by the fact that the majority of designs even today, were originated by Persian weavers.
Lets talk about basics. All Oriental rugs are woven on a loom by hand. If made in a small village the loom is usually constructed of wood and not perfectly straight but if made in a professional workshop the loom would most likely be metal and more exactly designed.
The loom is strung with vertical threads, which would be the starting point of any rug. These threads are called warps and can be of cotton, wool or silk. Tying loops around a pair of the warps creates the design of the rug. Each knot is tied and individually cut by hand. One by one, variously colored strands of wool are used to create the design, one row at a time. After one row of knots have been completed, the weft is then inserted between the just completed row and the next one to be done. The wefts function to secure the knots in place and hold the rug together. Some weavers insert only one row of wefts between the rows of knots, others 2, 3, 4 and more.
Most weavers are taught to weave at an early age by a family member and the choice of how many wefts or what type of knot to tie is influenced mainly by heritage and location of the weavers. Although many of the former nomadic (pastoral) weavers now reside in villages their rugs are more often than not a reflection of patterns woven for many generations in their area, each design motif being committed to memory.
In the professional rug workshops the choice of design styles is normally dictated by the demands of the market, either overseas or locally. The warps and wefts are nearly always cotton or silk and the knot count is usually higher than that of village production. In rug workshops the weaving is carefully supervised by a master weaver who is responsible for every loom under his watchful eye. In these workshops the weavers are following an exact design drawn out on graph paper with all color choices predetermined. Tribal or village rugs are often woven in the home with many of the design elements committed to memory. The opportunity for creativity in this arena is much greater. Tribal rugs often are woven on a wool or cotton foundation. The “foundation” being another term for the warps and the wefts. There are of course exceptions to these general rules but basically these concepts hold true.