Glossary of Rug Terms #27
Every so often, we write a rug term dictionary post for those wanting to improve their handmade rug vernacular.
Whether you are an expert on decorative rugs or reading about the field for the first time, you will find these terms to be very interesting!
Lanolin, wool fat: a fatty oil coating of sheep’s wool. In commercial wool production, lanolin is a residue of the wool washing process. In wool rugs, lanolin adds luster and flexibility to wool fibers. Attempts to restore lanolin to old rugs are of doubtful value.
Lazy lines: diagonal lines visible from the back of a knotted rug caused by successive rows of turnarounds of discontinuous wefts. This occurs when only a portion of the width of a rug is woven at one time.
Leaf and calyx, leaf and goblet, wineglass: a border design used in Caucasian rugs, especially those of the Kazak region. Diagonal serrated leaves alternate with a geometricized calyx which suggests goblets or wineglass.
Lingzhi: a Chinese fungus growing at the base of trees and thought to bestow immortality when eaten. It is sometimes represented as a motif in Chinese rugs.
Linen: fabric made of yarn with fibers from the stem of the flax plant. Linen is not generally used in rugs, though it has been used in the warps of rugs of Donegal, rya rugs and Polish rugs.
Logwood: a red to violet dye used in Chinese rugs and derived from the heartwood of Haematoxylon campechianum, a leguminous tree of Central America and the West Indies.
Loom drawing: a full-size color pattern of a rug design (usually one quarter of the rug) to be copied by the weaver at the loom. Graph paper is used with each cell representing one knot. Often, yarn samples for each color are attached to the loom drawing.
Luminance: brightness, that quality of a color differentiating light from dark.
Source: The Oriental Rug Lexicon (Paperback) by Peter F. Stone
