ROUND RUGS

Are you looking for a round rug? Are you finding it difficult, especially with hand knotted rugs, to find something that matches, ideally, like your regular rectangular rugs that you have in your other rooms?

There is a reason why hand knotted rugs are not as common in circular sizes. Rugs are created on looms, and with hand knotted rugs these looms have two sets of strands of either cotton or wool, running vertically and horizontally. These are called the warp and weft. These are the foundations of a rug.

A loom is created (in its most simplistic explanation) using two vertical poles, and one horizontal pole over the two verticals, and finally one horizontal pole near the bottom. Please see fig 1.

As you can now see, the basis of the creation of a hand knotted rug is rectangular, and not circular. The circle is achieved by the weaver, as he moves along the weft, placing the wool knots at the top in the middle, and gradually widening out, similar to a pyramid pattern. This is how he achieves a circular rug, and what many rugs are not perfectly circular, and not perfectly consistent around every edge.

You will often see circular rugs referred to by their circular dimensions (e.g. 2 metre circular) but you will also note that they are described as 2 metre by 2 metre, giving a total area of 4 metres. This is of course, inaccurate, as the rug ony has 3.14 square metre area. However, due to the layout of the loom, and the effort made by the weaver, this is always sold on as if it were a square, hence commanding extra money.

The above generally applies to hand knotted and hand woven rugs, hand tufted, hand loom and machine made rugs are created in a different fashion. Handtufted and hand loom rugs are created on a cotton canvas that has been cut to size and will have the threads of wool or acrylic inserted into it with a tufted gun. Again, these rugs are calculated as having an area same as a square, but it is debateable whether this is a fair pricing method.