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Differences between manual and mechanical carpet
How do you know if a carpet is manual or mechanical?
This is surely one of the most frequent doubts that arises when buying, valuing or simply browsing in this world of rugs.
And yet it is, possibly, one of the easiest questions to answer and that, with the right “clues”, we can understand and distinguish them very easily.
All this, knowing how to distinguish between a manual rug and a mechanical rug and knowing their differences, will make us value much more and in its right measure, the work involved in knotting a beautiful work of art such as a manual rug and we understand that the price paid for them, although sometimes a lot of money, It’s always very cheap.
They are apparently similar and perform the same function, but the differences are simply abysmal. It’s exactly the same difference between a hand-painted painting and a poster or print with an image on it.
Manual carpets come from a tradition that dates back more than 2500 years with a complex production process. It is a discipline that has evolved over more than 25 centuries, acquiring a whole series of characteristics that make it an art.
On the contrary, the mechanical carpet is a, better or worse, imitation but always an imitation of the design of a traditional handmade carpet. It is a mechanical process carried out by a machine that is capable of producing thousands of exactly the same carpets with a quality and result inferior to that of a manual one.
Below we detail the main “clues” to differentiate a manual mat from a mechanical one:
1.- Fringes: In manual rugs, the fringe is part of the warp, the vertical threads of the rug, therefore it is a thread that starts at one end of the rug, crosses it all and comes out at the other end. In a mechanical carpet the fringe is an artificial addition that is sewn at the end of the carpet in order to imitate the real fringe effect of a manual carpet and, therefore, in this case the fringes do not come out of the inside of the carpet, they are simply superimposed.
2.- Knot: the manual carpet is knotted which means that if we turn it over we can see the “ball” of the knot, the back of a manual carpet is full of knots. In a mechanical carpet there are no knots and on many occasions its back is covered by a fabric lining to hide this circumstance, another consequence of all this is that, generally, if we pull the “hairs” of a manual carpet they do not come out, at most we will be able to pull out some thread, however, in a mechanical carpet as it does not have a knot if we pull one of those threads we will be able to remove it cleanly in a V shape.
Estructura de una alfombra manual
3.- Hair inclination: In a manual carpet the pile of the carpet is always inclined to one side, which has two main consequences: The first is that it produces an iridescent effect and therefore the carpet looks light from one side and dark from the other and secondly as the pile is inclined it forms a structure similar to that of roof tiles and therefore prevents dirt from penetrating inside, being accumulated on the surface. However, in a mechanical carpet the pile is always straight, which implies that with the passage of time it begins to grind, likewise there is no iridescent effect, it looks the same from all angles. And finally, dirt does enter its interior.
V-shaped thread on a mechanical mat
4.- Dyes: A manual carpet can be dyed with natural or artificial dyes, while a mechanical carpet only uses artificial dyes.
5.- Composition: A manual carpet can be knotted in wool or silk and sometimes even in cotton but never in artificial fabrics, while mechanical carpets are usually made with artificial fabrics and sometimes with wool, never silk.
6.- Quality and result: A consequence of all the above is that a manual carpet offers a much better result than a mechanical one, greater durability and, above all, much better development over time, which means that it ages much better, a manual carpet generally becomes old, acquiring greater and greater beauty, while a mechanical one becomes old by directing, irremediably, towards its only possible end: the garbage container.
7.- Folding: As a consequence of the way it is structured, a manual carpet can be folded just like we fold a sheet or a blanket, while a mechanical carpet can only be rolled up, otherwise its structure would break.
In the following video we can see the complete process of making a manual rug, from its design to the end: