Since the earliest of times, human species have tried to separate their feet from the
cold floor. In the early days people have used animal fur to cover the floor of our
homes. With the domestication of animals, the need and the possibility for a more sophisticated
covering arose. With the shearing of their furs woven coverings could be made. And thus,
carpets were born.
Before going on about the history, some basic things about what weaving is. To make a carpet
you need a warp thread (which is a vertically stretched thread) and a fill thread which
is horizontally intertwined with the vertical ones. The warp and the fill thread make up
the foundation of the carpet, the pile is extra threads that give the carpet its design.
A loom is also needed; its basic function is to stretch the warp threads for easier
weaving. Depending on how you loop the fill threads with the warp threads you have different
methods of weaving, which are a story of their own altogether that deserve their own videos
for me to do them justice.
Before actual evidence of carpets, it is thought that our distant ancestors probably used mats
of interlaced stalks and vines. While evidence that sheep and goats were being sheared for
their hair and wool which was then spun and woven into primitive carpets has been discovered
as far back as 6000 B.C. Further evidence discovered in 1953 in an
Egyptian mural, which are quickly becoming a staple of this channel, shows a handloom
for weaving dated around 1480 B.C. However Ancient Egyptians are known to have woven
pieces of colored wool fabric and also linen carpets as early as the 3rd millennium BC.
The origination and the spread of carpets is a bit of a mystery however. There are researchers
who allude that the art of carpet-making was spread by the Ancient Egyptians throughout
the Middle East and on to Mongolia and China. While others dispute this claim saying that
carpets were originally created somewhere in Central Asia.
Be that how it may, the earliest surviving carpet, was discovered in the late 1940’s.
Soviet anthropologist Sergei Rudenko while excavating in Scythian ice-filled tombs in
Siberia, Russia found what is now the earliest surviving carpet, called the Pazyryk carpet.
This amazingly detailed carpet was in almost perfect condition due to it being frozen when
found. It measures 183 by 200 cm’s and has a knot density of approximately 36 knots per
square centimeter for a total of 1.250.000 knots in the whole carpet. It is fascinatingly
fine and it has higher knot density than most modern carpets. The carpet is framed by a
border of what appear to be griffins, followed by another one of 24 fallow deer and the widest
border contains 28 figures of men on horseback and dismounted as well. Dated somewhere around
5th to 4th century BC its exact origins are unknown however. Some think it is of Scythian
or Armenian made others think that it was imported from the Persian Empire, this is
also Sergei Rudnenko’s stance. Currently the Pazyryk carpet is exhibited in the Hermitage museum in Russia.
With the coming of Islam in the 7th century,
rugs were used to pray on and are still used today. These praying rugs are called Sajjada
in Arabic or Namazlik in Persian. Its purpose is primarily to cover the ground or floor
while praying. These rugs have an arch-shaped design called in Islam a Mihrab which during
praying it must point towards Mecca.
In the early fourteenth century, the famous Italian explorer and merchant Marco Polo wrote
in the account of his travels: "...and here they make the most beautiful
silks and carpets in the world, and with the most beautiful colours”, he was talking
about the Anatolian region. This region is thought to have produced carpets
before the Seljuq conquest. There is a group of carpets known as Anatolian rugs originating
in and around Asia minor, usually referring to the territories under Ottoman rule.
The earliest surviving woven rugs were found in Konya, Beyşehir in Turkey and Fostat in Egypt,
and these carpets were dated to the 13th century. These carpets from the Anatolian Seljuq Period
(1243–1302) are regarded as the first group of Anatolian rugs. The style of the Seljuq
rugs has parallels amongst the architectural decoration of contemporaneous mosques such
as those at Divriği, Sivas, and Erzurum, and may be related to Byzantine art.
Other noteworthy countries that produced fine carpets are the countries that constitute
the so-called “rug-belt”. This rug belt stretches from Morocco across North Africa
through the Middle East and into Central Asia and Northern India.
Onwards to a more familiar type of carpets,
called the Persian carpet. There is evidence from 400 BC that Persian carpets were produced
and were a sort of a luxury item back then. The ancient Greek author Xenophon in his book
Anabasis speaks of a certain "Timasion the Dardanian who is known to have some Persian drinking
cups and carpets” Xenophon goes further to say that “Timasion also drank his health
and presented him with a silver bowl and a carpet worth ten mines” which gives credence
to the theory that even back then Persian carpets were luxurious items possibly due
to their fine making.
Some consider the Pazyryk carpet to be of Persian origin, but the uncontested carpet of Persian origins that survive today are
the so-called Ardabil carpets that date around the year 1540 AD. These pair of famous carpets
are exhibited currently in London and in Los Angeles. Called Ardabil after the ancient
city located in the Ardabil region in present day Iran, which was famous for carpet weaving.
The size of the carpet is 10.5m by 5.3m while it took 26 million knots to make, making it
a pretty fine rug.
Up until the 18th century carpets used to be weaved by hand. An English inventor and clergyman called Edmund Cartwright in the
year 1784 invented the first power loom in the world.
Over the years however his ideas were modified and polished into more reliable automatic looms
With the coming of the Industrial Revolution — and the invention of the department store in the
middle of the 19th century, which began to shape the purchasing desires of the burgeoning
middle-classes — things began to move quickly within the carpet industry, with innovation
following innovation, most notably the Gripper Axminster loom that increased the speed of
production hugely, which inevitably reduced prices and increased volume sales that were
already becoming linked to a housing boom that, by the 1880s, was increasing two-fold
every year.
In the 1930s, as a result of the demand for more bedspreads, the first mechanized tufting
machine, attributed to Glen Looper Foundry of Dalton, was developed that would speed
up the process even further.
In the 50’s wall-to-wall carpeting, which was once a luxury, finally became affordable. Nylon yarns were used tufted into woven grid
backings. These carpets were then installed by stretching the tufted backing onto wood
strips adjacent to walls, held firmly in place with tacks.
Today, tufted products are more than 90 percent of the total, followed by less than 2 percent
that are woven, and 6.7 percent for all other methods, such as knitted, braided, hooked,
or needlepunched. The global carpets and rug market is expected to grow in the coming years
even further, by the year 2023 this industry will be worth 107.9 billion dollars.
In the present day there are so many carpet choices to make and carpets are making a comeback
with the newer generations. The history of the carpets won’t end here and is in fact
far from over, I think that as long as there are cold floors in the morning, we won’t
get cold feet from carpet usage anytime soon.