India– The Home of Finest Woolen Rugs
The Indian handicraft industry has a lot to offer, one of which are the finely designed woolen rugs that have evolved over the centuries to coincide with a variety of tastes, climates and budgets. Woolen carpets are renowned for their rich and elegant look. Also, wool has excellent durability, can be dyed easily and is fairly abundant; plus, when wool is blended with synthetic fibres such as nylon, the durability increases.
Initially, the motifs used in the carpets were purely of Persian origin, but later designs from Afghanistan, Turkey, China and France were introduced. This presented the Indian carpet industry with a character of its own. From Ladakh to West Bengal and Sikkim to Manipur, carpets are made of pure wool in bright colours. For more that 2500 years, the patterns reproduced are of flowers arabesques and rhomboids.
The best–grade Indian wool is used for weaving the medium quality carpets, while imported wool mixed with the finest Indian wool are used for superior quality carpets. However, rugs woven of a fine quality wool do not deliver instant lustre, rather they develop a lustre after use but since people desire lustrous carpets at the time of purchase, these are washed with chemicals to enhance the natural lustre, though the chemicals reduce the life span of the rugs.
The type of rug and the technique used for weaving varies from state to state. Apart from Kashmir, some fine quality woolen rugs are also produced in Amritsar, Agra, Jaipur, Eluru and Warangal (Andhra Pradesh). The Mizapur-Bahadohi belt in Uttar Pradesh, though specialising in lower and medium qualities, has the largest concentration of the country’s carpet weavers.
The fineness and superiority of woolen rugs can be judged by the number of knots per unit area, the firmness, thickness and appearance of the back of the carpet. Among the hand knotted rugs, the Bokhara is known to be the finest.