Chinese rugs: materials

Southwestern RugsDirect Rugs

Though it is generally possible to determine at a glance the material used in the pile of Chinese rugs, it is necessary to remove a single knot from the rug and untwist it in order to come to definite conclusion in regard to the methods employed in the preparation of the materials.

Hand spinning is easily detected, as it is generally possible to pull apart the filaments and turn the wool back again into its original condition when it has been crudely prepared by domestic process, whereas it is quite impossible to do this with machine twisted wool, hair, or silk, which has been stretched and drawn out of all resemblance to natural wool or cocoon silk.

The test of burning is absolute and one has only to burn cotton, silk, wool and hair, one after the other, in order to be able to see the variations in the way fire affects the different products.

The sense of smell aids that of sight, burning wool emitting a vastly different odor from either cotton or silk.

With these methods at hand for drawing definite conclusions, it is comparatively easy to avoid all mistakes in the classification of materials.