so for me growing up in the rug business something
that has always impressed me is how experts like my father can tell apart a rug in a matter of
a split second for example I remember several times we walk into a rug shop and immediately
he looks across the shop sees a rug hanging on the wall and he could tell of course not only if
it's machine-made or hand-knotted it but he knows where it comes from also how old it is and all
this detailed information about it so would it be cool if you had this superpower well at least
when it comes to telling apart hand-knotted rugs from machine-made rugs there are several easy
tactics that we can learn to tell them apart Hi I'm Shawn with Catalina rug and in this
video we're going to be going over several different tactics that you can use to inspect a
rug and be able to tell if it's hand-knotted or machine made so that way you're going to be armed
with this new power now in this video we're going to be going over how to inspect the front of the
rug as well as how to check the straightness of the rug and how to look at the back of the rug
both when it comes to feeling the material as well as looking at the knots at how they appear
and then make sure you stick around to the end because we're going to be talking about how to
inspect the fringes because they are one of the biggest giveaways to be able to tell if a rug is
machine made or hand-knotted so stick around and all that it's coming up now so first let's go
over the tactic of looking at the front of the rug to be able to tell the difference now for rug
experts this is the only tactic that usually they need to use to immediately tell the difference
but for a less trained eye I recommend looking at first different images of hand-knotted rugs
versus machine made rugs also checking out some videos that way you can start to familiarize
your eyes with the difference and either way we're going to be talking about some specific
things that you can look into inspect to be able to tell the difference but definitely looking at
images and doing that comparison looking at videos is going to help train your eyes to start
noticing what to look for so here are some of the things to look out for with machine made
rugs so the first thing is that the design and the patterns with machine made rugs are going
to look perfectly symmetrical and what I mean by that is that if you look at The Medallion or the
pieces around The Medallion or the corner pieces or the borders everything in there is going to
look exactly symmetrical and of course this is because they're made with machines second thing
to look out for is that the look and feel of the rug and this is something that you'll need to
train your eyes for as you start looking at the comparison photos the look and feel of the rug
is going to be a little bit fuzzy it's not going to have the same Harmony and the sharpness
as a hand-knotted rug and of course this is because when a machine made rug is created it's
not going to be able to handle all the nuances of weaving the patterns and and the different
color of wool into the rug as compared to a expert rug weaver now when it comes to
hand-knotted rugs you're going to notice that the designs and the patterns are going to
feel more harmonious but they are not going to be perfectly symmetrical and especially depends
on where the rugs come from so for example rugs that are coming from tribal areas or Village areas
they're not woven with an exact blueprint most of these Weavers are going to use their memories
to weave the rug and so as they're making the rug it's not going to be perfectly symmetrical
and there's going to be more imperfections so for an untrained eye it'll be easier to be able
to tell whether or not this rug is hand-knotted or machine made now when it comes to hand-knotted
rugs made in cities or workshops well for these rugs it's going to be a little bit harder to tell
because they are as close to perfect as humanly possible and they're made by expert rug Weavers
who are falling blueprints so they're going to have really precise designs however they're still
going to be subtle differences and you're going to notice that they're not going to be perfectly
symmetrical like they are in a machine made rug so in any case no matter where the hand-knottred
rugs are coming from whether it comes from a tribe Village or a workshop there's going to be subtle
cues that the rug is made by a human because even when the rug Weaver is nodding the rugs onto the
rug they're going to be using different kind of pressure over time or they're going to beat down
the rug with a different strength over time so this is going to create subtle differences which
is going to make the rug not perfectly symmetrical however you'll notice that hand-knotted rugs are
just going to have more Harmony and they're going to have a better look and feel when you compare
it to machine made rug but really the best way to be able to train your eyes with these differences
is to look at several different examples of the comparison between hand-knotted and machine-made
rug and just look at the look and feel of the rug in these pictures and just familiarize your
eyes with the difference so the second tactic that we're going to use to tell the difference
between hand-knotted rug or machine-made rug is by checking the rug for straightness and we're
going to do this by checking the four edges of the rug and looking at the distances and what are
the differences between these distances again this is something that rug experts will be able to tell
right away but in our case we could use a measure tape and write down the differences so what
you'll do is take a tape measure and measure the top distance of the rug so this is the distance
from the top edges of the rug with one corner to another and then check the same distance in the
bottom of the rug from one quarter to another corner you could do the same thing in the middle
of the rug and write down all these measurements and of course when it comes to machine made rugs
when you make these measurements and check the differences between these distances you're going
to find that they're almost always going to be exactly the same and of course this is because
they're made by machine so the machine is going to create these rugs perfectly symmetrical and
perfectly straight now of course when it comes to hand-knotted rugs oftentimes when you make these
measurements you're going to find that they're a little bit different they could be a few inches
apart and some of them much less and this really depends on how the rug was was made so certain
rugs are made with wooden looms and those type of looms are known for Contracting expanding over
time so this will kind of make some differences in the straightness of the rug also another factor
is if the rug is made with a wool foundation and a wool is another thing that tends to contract and
expand over time which can make the rug not as straight so that's definitely obviously something
that 10 other rugs are going to have they're not going to be perfectly straight when you compare
them to a machine made rug so next what we're going to do is behave just like a rug expert
so with rug experts when they start looking at a rug from a distance if they can't tell all
the information they start getting closer to the rug and not only they start looking at the rug
real closely but they will also flip the rug over and they start looking at the back of the rug and
that's exactly what we're going to do next we're going to start focusing on the back of the rug
how it feels and start inspecting what the back should look like when we're trying to tell the
difference between hand-knotted or machine made so this next step requires you to actually inspect
the rug in person and the reason is we're gonna actually take the rug and flip it over and feel
the back of the rug so with machine made rugs when you take your fingers and you run them across the
back or List It with your fingernails or the tip of your fingers you're going to feel that the
material is going to feel pretty stiff almost like a plastic-like material and the reason for
that is that machine made rugs are usually made with synthetic materials like a polyester or
polypropylene or nylon and so when you run your fingers against the back you're going to feel this
kind of more rigid stiff material now if you run the same type of inspection with the hand-knotted
rug you're going to feel that the back is going to feel much softer compared to the machine-made
rugs and that's because usually the material you're feeling is either going to be cotton which
is a lot of times a foundation or it could be wool which a lot of time is a pile or it could even be
silk or a combination of those materials so when you run your fingers again sense that you're
going to feel one of those materials which are much softer than those synthetic materials
and because the knots are coming through you're basically feeling the back of the pile instead
of the front of the pile but you're still feeling that soft material if you're enjoying this video
and want to learn more about hand-knotted Persian or oriental rugs then I invite you to like And
subscribe and definitely turn on your notification Bell because we put out rug education videos just
like this every week now next let's continue our inspection of the back of the rug and look at the
knots and the knot density and the appearance of the back so that way we can tell the difference
between machine-made or hand-knotted so while we're looking at the back of the rug now we're
going to be looking and inspecting it much closer and looking at the knots and actual appearance
of the back so with the machine made rugs what you're going to notice is again everything is
going to be more perfect and more symmetrical and what if you look at it you're going to notice
that everything is going to be really aligned and it won't almost like a honeycomb structure another
thing you'll notice is when you look at the actual design and the pattern you won't really be able
to see it from the back of the rug it's almost like looking at a one-way mirror and same thing
goes with the colors none of the pattern and the colors are going to be very obvious by looking
at the rug from the back when you're looking at a machine-made rug now when you're inspecting
the back of a hand-knotted rug as you can guess by now the big difference is that it's not going
to look as perfectly symmetrical compared to a machine made rug and the biggest thing is that
it's not going to really have that honeycomb structure that you're going to see in a machine
made rug you're more going to notice the patterns the designs and all the colors of the rod when you
look at the back and specifically when it comes to these rugs you'll notice that when you look at the
back you could pretty much make out with the front of the rug is going to look like so it's almost as
if they cut the pile of the rug really short and when you're looking at the back of the rug you're
pretty much seeing what the rug looks like but the pile is super short that you can kind of Imagine
it that way however when you look at a machine made rug again you really can't make out what
the front of the rug looks like so this is a big difference to look out for when you're inspecting
the back so finally we arrived at the tactic that in my opinion is the biggest giveaway to be able
to tell if a rug is machine-made or hand-knotted and thus we're going to be looking at the actual
fringes of the rug the very ends of the rug or sometimes called the tassels now we're going to
inspect these fringes closely to be able to tell the difference so when it comes to inspecting the
fringes of a machine made rug one of the things to look out for is that certain machine made rugs
don't even have fringes so if you look at the one end of the rug at the other end of the rug you
won't even find fringes on them that's just a clear debt giveaway another thing you could look
at is that these fringes are usually added to the rug afterwards so fringes when it comes to machine
made rugs are actually attached to the rug as part of the process is one of the last processes before
the rug is finished is by attaching the fringes to the right but another thing you could look at is
the actual material of the fringes again they're usually going to be made with a polyester
synthetic material or nylon material so you could feel the material of the fringes and see if
they feel like cotton wool or do they feel like a synthetic material and then finally if you look
at the fringes of machine made rugs you'll notice that they're going to be again like with anything
that's machine made they're going to look really uniform in appearance everything is going to look
really straight and uniform now when it comes to the hand-knotted rugs the fringes are actually
part of the foundation of the rug if you take the rug and inspect it closely you'll notice that
the fringes of the rug are completely connected in the back so basically they're part of the core
structure of the rug and when it comes to their material they're going to be made with the same
material as the foundation so either it's going to be cotton sometimes they'll be wool or sometimes
silk also you'll notice that they're not going to be perfectly uniform so sometimes you're going
to find that on one side The Fringe are going to be a little bit longer than the other side for
example and also sometimes they're decorated or they're braided and especially when it comes to
hand-knotted rugs that are coming from tribes and Villages so that's a big difference that you'll be
able to tell when you compare between hand-knotted fringes and machine-made fringes so this concludes
our video on how to tell the difference between a machine-made rug or a hand-knotted rug I really
hope that you're feeling empowered and the next time you inspect the rug you can easily
tell the difference and if you're looking for beautiful hand-knotted Persian or oriental
rugs then I invite you to check out our site catalinarug.com we have an inventory of over 3
000 rugs for you to select from also I invite you to watch our video on how to spot an authentic
Persian rug or binge on our playlist about the different types of rugs please like subscribe and
comment below and I'll see you in the next video
