The Rug Library

A knotted-pile carpet has a raised surface made from the cut ends of knots tied onto the warps, with rows of knots held in place by weft passes.

Kashmiri hand-knotted carpets are made as silk-on-silk, silk-on-cotton, all-wool, and 'staple' qualities using synthetic silk or mercerised cotton.

A gabba is a Kashmiri floor rug made by piecing together old woollen blankets or cloth, which are milled, dyed and then covered with chain-stitch or appliqué embroidery.

The Kashmiri namda is a felted rather than woven rug: layers of washed wool are wetted, pressed and rolled until the fibres mat together, then usually embroidered.

Indian pile carpets are generally knotted in wool on a cotton warp and weft, with silk foundations used more rarely, for example in Kashmir.

Warps are the threads running the length of a rug and form its foundation; their ends are often left free to become the fringe.

Wefts are the yarns passed across a rug's width, over and under the warps, locking rows of knots in place in pile rugs or forming the whole design in flat-weaves.

A kilim has no pile: warp and weft are simply interlaced into a flat weave, with no extra yarn knotted in.

Kashmiri rugs are hand-knotted mainly in pure wool or pure silk, and occasionally in wool-and-silk blends.

In gabba making, old woollen cloth is milled by carding and washing it in warm soapy water so that it shrinks into a dense, soft base before embroidery.