The Sehna has small figures in floral or 
diaper effects with the pear and palm 
predominating 
An American-made copy of a sixteenth cen¬ 
tury Kazan prayer rug obtainable at $55 
for the q x 12 size 
The Sarebends always show a field made up 
of many units representing the Persian 
pear 
American-made Rugs in Oriental Patterns 
AFTER MANY YEARS OF CRUDE ATTEMPTS AT IMITATING THE RUG DESIGNS 
AND COLORINGS OF THE EASTERN WEAVERS, THE TIME SEEMS TO HAVE COME 
WHEN SUCCESS IS CROWNING THE EFFORTS OF AMERICAN MANUFACTURERS 
by T. E. Whittlesey 
Photographs by the author and others 
T HERE is nothing very startlingly new in the machine¬ 
weaving of rugs after the intricate and wonderfully 
varied patterns of the Orient; it has been attempted, more or 
less feebly, almost ever since that ingenious Frenchman, Joseph 
Marie Jacquard, put his first carpet-weaving loom into success¬ 
ful operation. There has never been any conspicuous success 
in these attempts, however, until the present time. Failure has 
accompanied every effort, usually in the colorings. 
The most distinguishing characteristic of a beautiful Orien¬ 
tal rug is its coloring — never crude or harsh, blending softly 
from one minor tone to another. The knowledge of how to 
secure these colors with vegetable dyes, permanently set in Per¬ 
sian wool that has not had the oil and life scoured out of it, is 
the priceless heritage of the descendant of generation upon gen¬ 
eration of rug-weavers in the far East. It was not to be ex¬ 
pected that American manufacturers could at the outset, with 
the necessity for machine-weaving as well as wool-dyeing in 
great quantities, even approximate the results that have reached 
their present degree of excellence after centuries of sustained 
development. 
It is hard for us to realize that the designs found in Oriental 
rugs are not the work of a single man, or even of a group of 
men. These designs were not made in a day. Sir Caspar Pur- 
don Clarke says, in this connection, “None of the patterns we 
so greatly admire in old Oriental rugs were original designs; 
they were but slow developments of various types of surface 
decoration, where the forms, originally symbolic, were regarded 
with superstitious respect and the colorings followed rules which 
were seldom deviated from. The designer’s whole effort was 
therefore narrowed into perfecting forms he already understood, 
in attending to niceties of shading and in refining his predeces¬ 
sor's work, and this, going on from age to age, resulted in a 
perfection which could not be obtained by any other means.'’ 
This is precisely the reason, of course, that we find all of 
the rugs woven in a given locality closely following the estab¬ 
lished type. Take for instance the Daghestans, which come from 
a province in the Russian Caucasus, originally Persian terri¬ 
tory ; all bear the characteristic geometrical patterns — stars, 
hexagons, etc. — differing among themselves, of course, in pat¬ 
tern and color, but all unmistakably from the same school of 
weavers. Then again the Sarebends, woven in the mountains of 
western Persia, in the province of Saravan, show always the 
distinctive field made up of a great number of units representing 
the Persian pear, arranged in rows, enclosed by a series of 
narrow borders filled with delicate floral figures, undulating vines 
and a conventional rectilinear flower. 
In addition to its merits in coloring and design, the Oriental 
rug lays claim to marvelous wearing qualities. The wool from 
which it is made comes from sheep that have been bred for ages 
with the idea of getting the longest and toughest coats — sheep 
roaming barren and mountainous country. After continued 
trials and experiments most of the American makers have found 
that, in order to secure for domestic rugs the same degree of 
excellence in wearing qualities, they have to import their wool 
from the East — Palestine, Persia, Arabia and the Himalaya 
Mountains. Even after securing this wool from the opposite 
side of the earth it has to be sorted out so as to eliminate the 
short pieces which, parenthetically, are used in the weaving of 
blankets. 
The dyes used in the best American-made rugs are brought 
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