All Posts in: Dyes and Wool

• Dyes and Spin: Final Considerations

  01.08.08 | Comment?

  For more than half a century it seemed as if the skills needed to weave great carpets were lost forever. But look at this new Bijar from northwestern Iran. In all respects it is equal to the 19th-century Bijars that are prized so highly by collectors.

  Oriental Rugs Today: Chapter 3 Part 4
  For all practical purposes, […]

• Handspun vs. Machine-Spun Wool Pile

  01.07.08 | 3 Comments

  Turkmen woman spinning wool with a drop spindle.

  Oriental Rugs Today: Chapter 3 Part 3
  Spinning is the process of twisting together and drawing out massed short fibers into a continuous strand. The technique of spinning wool by hand has been known for some thousands of years, and was in exclusive use for preparing the wool that […]

• Natural Dyes and Synthetic Dyes in Oriental Rugs

  12.06.07 | 10 Comments

  Wool seeping in a pot of madder dye in Lahore, 1998.

  Oriental Rugs Today: Chapter 3 Part 2
  We have seen that one of the ‘revolutionary’ aspects of modern rug production has been the return of natural dyes. Not long ago, shoppers who were interested in new rugs (or who couldn’t or wouldn’t spend the money to […]

• Natural Dyes Rediscovered

  11.26.07 | Comment?

  An early Azeri from Woven Legends. The nascent renaissance in Oriental rugs moved a step forward in the middle and late 1980s when Woven Legends released carpets like this. Its outrageous asymmetry, its huge borders and giant design elements, its playfulness, its lavish natural dyes—all were without precedent. And this is not a little tribal […]