Saturday, November 21, 2009

Elegant Home Decor and Area Rugs Should Include Hand Made Wool Rugs

By Frank Conn

The first wool fiber textile was introduced in Europe around 1500 BC. Over a period of time, all over Europe people used to use wool as a form of clothing to cover their bodies. This was an outgrowth of man's initially utilizing sheep and goats for a multitude of domestic purposes, including utilizing the hides and skins for blankets and clothing.

By the middle ages, wool was considered as a product favorable for business opportunities, and as time passed new ideas and techniques were developed to produce wool textile products in different configurations, colors and patterns. This was the direct result of the evolution of domestic animal husbandry techniques improved and developed over the centuries, wool became a ever more important commercial and trade commodity. Wool rug and other wool product manufacturing became a major force in international trade.

Many of the very ancient styles of wool rugs, in particular Persian Rugs, are still highly valued and prized for their superior quality and unique and fine quality designs. These rug styles date back to ancient Persia, and are beautiful and stunning hand woven wool rugs. These Persian rugs are classic examples of traditional styles and designs of the wool rugs and are still hand made by expert craftsmen. These are prized for their intricate designs, vivid colors and patterns.

One of the amazing aspects of Persian rug design is that they include single or multiple motifs. Different types of rugs, of course, contain different motifs; however some persian rugs are so intricate that the contain multiple complex motifs. These are all hand woven with carefully crafted curvilinear and other intricate designs. The work is enormously complicated but the result is stunning.

Contemporary styles and designs are different from the traditional styles of wool rugs. These are specially designed keeping in mind the modern appeal. They consist of many shapes, sizes, colors and patterns. They are soft as compared to the traditional wool rugs. Contemporary styles and designs are simple but look elegant. The colors used in the manufacturing of these rugs are vibrant and also provide modern designs. Many are still made by hand, either hand woven, hand tufted or hand knotted, but many are also machine woven for the sake of economy.

However, handmade rugs which use contemporary styles, the two most popular techniques are the hand-knotted and hand-tufted techniques. Today, most of the homes opt for these special and attractive looking rugs for home decor.

Hand tufting has special features which have made it very popular. This technique can provided a desirable carved effect due to the different pile heights. The hand tufted techniques basically refers to the cutting actions which enable to produce a cut pile tufted rug, carpet or wall hanging. The hand tufting "gun" is a hand tool which has the ability to cut pile to loop pile or modify the height of pile in a short period of time. It can even switch from an even sided cut pile to a "J" tuft. These special features has made the hand tufted technique popular.

Hand knotting is another technique which is popular in the making of modern and contemporary wool rugs. Here, the rugs are produced in a manner which offers a pre-determined height to give the pile uniformity. The value of this technique is that a hand-knotted rug depends on the number of knots per square inch. The more knots per square inch the heavier and more substantial and it is considered a higher quality.

If proper care is taken with regard to the maintenance of wool rugs, they last for a lifetime while retaining their softness. For affordable and elegant wool rugs and wool area rugs, the best shopping today are reliable online rug sellers like Hollywood Love Rugs.

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