Handmade rugs

Our handmade rugs represent the top tier of textile production. Unlike industrial rugs made by machine, they are hand-knotted, hand-woven or hand-tufted by experienced craftspeople. The result: a rich and deep texture, durability measured in decades, and the character of pieces that can never be reproduced quite exactly.

Knotted, woven, tufted: three crafts

Our collection brings together the three great techniques of the handmade rug. Each has its own feel, its own look and its own price.

• Hand-knotted: the artisan builds the pile knot by knot on a loom, with up to around 200,000 knots per m² on our finest designs. It is the slowest and most precious technique: the design is extremely fine and shows right through to the back of the rug
• Hand-woven: wool or jute yarns are interlaced on a hand loom. The rug is flat or gently textured, supple, with a clearly visible weave that gives it all its charm
• Hand-tufted: the artisan punches wool, Tencel or viscose through a stretched canvas using a hand tufting gun. The pile is then sheared and sometimes carved by hand to create relief, and the back is covered with a canvas

These techniques call for years of accumulated skill. They make possible textures and designs far more sophisticated than industry can manage: carved relief, interplay of materials and contemporary compositions that mechanical production simply cannot achieve.

What is hand-tufting?

In hand-tufting, the craftsperson inserts the wool (or Tencel, or viscose) tuft by tuft through a stretched canvas, using a hand tufting gun. Each tuft is placed precisely to reproduce the design. Pile heights can vary on the same piece: short and long pile, bevelled edges, patterns in three dimensions. It is the technique behind our rugs with the most pronounced relief.

Which materials?

Our handmade rugs use noble materials exclusively:

• Virgin wool: the traditional material par excellence. Hard-wearing, warm, naturally antistatic and flame-resistant
• Viscose: a silky sheen that lifts the colours, though more delicate
• Tencel (lyocell): an ecological fibre made from eucalyptus, very soft and silky to the touch, and more durable than viscose
• Jute: a natural plant fibre, hand-woven, with a raw and warm grain
• Wool and viscose or Tencel blends: they combine the strength of wool with the lustre of viscose or Tencel
• Cotton: used for the backing of the rug, giving it its structure

Which styles suit handmade?

Handmade craftsmanship suits contemporary and design styles particularly well:

• Modern designs: graphic compositions, abstract forms, painterly works for the floor
• Plain textures: relief effects (loop plus cut pile), tone-on-tone stripes, carved textures
• Contemporary geometrics: Bauhaus, Memphis and minimalist compositions
• Scandinavian style: natural weaves in wool or jute, soft tones
• Gradations and mixed materials: wool plus viscose, to play with the light

For more traditional styles (Persian, oriental, Berber), we offer machine-produced versions with premium densities, including our 3M+ points/m² Persians.

Why invest in a handmade rug?

Several reasons justify the investment:

• Exceptional durability: a good handmade rug lasts several decades
• Generous material: far more material per m² than a standard industrial rug
• Touch and texture: the richness of a natural fibre worked by hand is impossible to imitate
• One of a kind: no two handmade rugs are strictly identical, so your piece is yours alone
• Relief and texture: relief, weave and material effects that industry cannot reproduce

How to recognise a genuine handmade rug

A few things to check:

• Slight irregularities in the motifs: the mark of human work, never perfectly symmetrical
• The back of the rug: on a hand-knotted rug you can make out the design; on a hand-tufted one it is covered with a canvas
• Tangible density: a substantial weight, and firmness under the hand
• Relief or weave: differences in pile height, or a weave you can both see and feel