The Turkoman silk rugs are generally twice the size of the usual sheep's wool or camel's hair rugs. They are very fine, and often two hundred dollars is paid for a rug of this kind eight feet square.
Rugs made of raw silk are exported from Samarkand, and silk rugs of old Persian designs are copied and woven at Cæsarea. Some weavers of the modern silk rug, however, do not have recourse to established designs; they give play to their imagination, as do the weavers of wool rugs. Other weavers copy chiefly designs from chintz, and still others work from designs introduced from Europe.
Mrs. Bishop tells us that silk produced at Resht is brought to Kashan to be spun and dyed. Then it is sent to Sultanabad to be woven into rugs. It is next returned to Resht to have the pile cut by the sharp instruments used for cutting the velvet pile. After the rugs are finished, they are sent to Teheran to be sold.
FELT RUGS
In the Orient a large and heavy rug is made of felt. This is used extensively by the natives, but is too heavy to export. Even the shepherds of the Kotan-Daria and of the Keriya-Daria use it in their primitive and isolated abodes. Sometimes an old felt rug is propped up by poles and becomes a tent, in which dwell the shepherds of Central Asia.
This felt rug is made of the hair of the camel, goat, or sheep, or by a mixture of all these kinds. It is matted together by heavy and constant pounding, moistened with water, turned and beaten again and again until it becomes compact and solid. Sometimes the felts are decorated with colored threads and often the name of the weaver is woven in. Among the best felts are those made at Astrabad and Yezd.
In color felts are gray, brown, or white. The last named are woven at Khotan. No dye is used; the hue is that of the hair of the animal, or the composite hue resulting from the mixture of the hair of different animals.
