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Oriental Rug History & Origins

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The term “Oriental rug” gets thrown around more often than it really should be for any patterned rug.  This is partially due to the ongoing confusion over the difference between machine-made and hand-made rugs that are sold in stores.  Some store employees may genuinely not be able to tell the difference between the two, but other retailers will actually take advantage of customers by claiming something is hand-made.  As a customer, you could be paying a premium price for a rug that was made by machines.  It is important to understand and recognize the differences yourself.

True Oriental rugs are ones that, as previously mentioned, are hand woven and knotted.  These types of rugs generally hail from the Middle East and Asia to where the origins of rug making can also be traced.  Countries such as India, China, Iran, and even Morocco and Egypt are known for producing high quality rugs.  Many other nations in those geographic regions may also produce rugs, but anything coming from Europe or America is probably machine-made and not genuine.

Although both rug types may possess Oriental designs, you need to look a little closer to notice the differences.  Any rug made from polypropylene and nylon are manufactured by machines and not created by hand.  These rugs may come from Belgium or any other country mass producing rugs with Oriental designs.

If you are a resident of Brooklyn or Manhattan and would like to further discuss the various origins of rug-making or figure out if your rug is made by hand or machines, give us a call today at (888) 719-3373.  We look forward to hearing from you.

Client Testimonials

We had H&S picked up two Persian rugs from our apt on the UPW, they cleaned them and repair the fringes and binding on one of them, I have to say I am very pleased with the result, the rugs came back in fine, great shape. Thank you Ben and his staff. I will be using you guys again

- MARTHA JACOBS

H&S truly did a remarkable restoration job, on our Wool and Silk rugs, which was infected with Moth damage, after cleaning it they have sent us detail photos of the damage and assessment of what needed to be done. When they brought it back we couldn’t find where the damages were, that’s how great their work is!! I highly recommend them!

–DANIEL STERN

We are very pleased that we have found H&S Oriental Rug Cleaning and Repair NYC. They showed up in time, they were very polite and gave us a detail explanation on our two Silk rugs, that had some very bad urine stains, they took the rugs, clean them, soaked them in a special bath that “breaks down the urine” as they explained. Afterword they restore the color very gracefully. In the end we got our rugs back in new condition, just like the first day we got them. Thank you H&S ☺

–VIVIAN THOMAS