Nepal rug | 156 x 97 cm | Nr. Z-4388

Lightly framed Nepal rug, dark blue

Origin	Nepal
Dimensions	156 cm x 97 cm (= 1.51 m²)
Construction	hand-knotted
Material	Pile: wool (hand-spun, natural dyes) Weft & Warp: cotton
knots per m²2	120.000
Pile height	20mm
Year of manufacture	1985
Colour	Dark blue, colourful shades
Edition	one-of-a-kind piece

Origin

Rugs have only been knotted in Nepal since 1959, following the flight of the Dalai Lama and the Tibetans who accompanied him. From 1966 onwards, under the guidance of the committed Zurich importer Jo Iten-Maritz, these displaced people were taught to knot rugs in the Tibetan tradition using the customary patterns. Once the rug designs were adapted to contemporary Western taste, Nepal's knotting output rose considerably. The central trading hub is the capital, Kathmandu. Most of the production workshops are based here as well.

Nepal rugs are knotted using a special technique. During knotting, a kind of continuous knot is looped in a line around a rod, so that a horizontal row of loops is formed. Once the rod is completely covered with these loops, they are cut open from above in that section, so that the pile fans out and a velour surface is created. In the end, the knot takes on the form of a Persian knot. This rapid method is only possible, however, because Nepalese-Tibetan rugs are largely plain and barely patterned over wide areas.

Pattern

A lightly suggested border frames the edge of this rug.

The background of this Nepal rug is dark blue. The border is worked in light red, light green and light blue.

Condition

You are not the first to take a liking to this Nepal rug. It had owners before you who valued and used it. It was hand-knotted around 1985. It has been thoroughly cleaned and is in good, though only partly restored, condition. We did not fully restore this Nepal rug because we feel it has a special charm just the way it is. If you would like us to, we will of course happily carry on restoring the rug for you. We can bring almost any rug back to near-perfect condition.

Material

The technique used to make the materials for the pile of this Nepal rug is more than 200 years old. The wool was dyed with natural dyes and spun by hand. Dyeing with natural or plant dyes is more complicated, more expensive and more time-consuming than dyeing with chemical colours. For a luminous red, for instance, you need around one kilo of ground madder root as dyestuff per kilo of wool. For a strong yellow that is not too pale, you even need two kilograms of the dyestuff weld per kilo of wool. Spinning the wool is time- and labour-intensive too. And fewer and fewer people still know how to spin wool by hand.

But the effort is worth it: dyeing with natural colours lets the high-quality wool keep its natural lanolin content. Wool dyed with natural colours and spun by hand creates fascinating, shimmering patterns. The charm of hand-spun wool, with its slight irregularities and natural shades, unfolds as a contrast in modern interiors, but just as well in rooms furnished in a more traditional or country style. The weft and warp threads of this Nepal rug are made of cotton. This versatile material is tear-resistant and elastic, which makes it especially well suited to a hard-wearing foundation.