Glossary of Rug Terms #4

Every month or so, we will post a few interesting rug-related terms and their definitions here for your knowledge and enjoyment. Always educate yourself on a topic before you make a purchase, especially with something like Oriental Rugs!

Kurdish Village Rugs – Rugs woven in the villages of Iranian Kurdistan. These are coarsely woven rugs with the symmetric knot, usually on a wool foundation.

Later rugs may have a cotton foundation. Often these rugs are abstract versions of classic patterns such as the Herati, Mina Khani or harshang patterns. There is a wide variety of geometric designs, diamonds, Memling gul and others used in these rugs.

Moquetter carpet – An eighteenth-century French velvet carpet or an early American-made Axminster. In French, any broadloom carpet.

Monofilament – A long, continuous fiber or filament. A common feature of synthetic fibers, but only occurring naturally in silk fiber.

Oriental Rug – An indefinite term. Originally, this term applied only to hand-knotted pile rugs woven in the Near East and Asia.

In current usage, the term includes all hand-knotted mpile rugs, regardless of origin, as well as many of the flat-woven rugs of the Near East and Asia. “Persian Rug” is sometimes used incorrectly as a synonym.

Orphan Rugs – From 1884 through the end of the First World War, thousands of Armenians died in the ethnic struggles between Christians and Muslims in Turkey.

Orphanages were founded for the homeless Armenian children where they were employed in weaving rugs. There are examples bearing inscriptions from Aintab in south central Anatolia and from Agin in eastern central Anatolia.

Acid dyes – Dyes derived from coal tar through the action of nitric acid. They produce bright colors in animal fibers. They are soluble in water and must be used in an acid solutions. The first such dye was Bismarck brown developed in 1862.