Carpets of the Chinese have a very ancient history. They completely captured the essence of the Persian carpet industry. The Chinese were skill craftsmen who weave to absolute perfection. The Chinese hand made rugs are make from silk which gives them a soft rich texture. The home spun silk also gives the colors a terrific shining appearance. The Seide Teppich are also famous for the ethnic designs that were weave into them.
Traditional Chinese dragon’s and peony flowers are typically always woven into the carpets. Once the carpets are weave then they are sheare so that the motifs of the carpets are eye catching. The motifs actually look like sculptures. Chinese craftsmen have been know to knot up to one million knots per square foot The Chinese are very refine craftsmen. People started to realize the high quality if Chinese silk rugs in the late 1970’s. This is why the value is increasing but the weavers are disappearing.
The silk carpets are so intricate that they take a long time to weave. Less and less people are weaving due to the difficulty of the rugs. The people are also able to make more money in other jobs. The weavers who do stick with the making of these beautiful silk rugs have a lot of work to do before the actual weaving even begins.
The first thing that has to done is a drawing of the rug itself. Then a chart of the design has to made for the weavers to follow. All the different colors have to be on it so that the weavers can read it like a blueprint. Next the raw silk has to taken off the cocoons and the fibers all banded. Once the fibers are band the silk strands have to put in boiling alkaline water. This is then when the fibers will get dyed into the colors that are need.
There are actually about 30 different colors of silk strands that are use when weaving a carpet. It can take one person up to a year and half or two years to make a 2 foot x 3 foot carpet. This size of carpet has 300 lines of 90,000 knots per square foot. It can take up to four years to weave a carpet of 500 lines which has 250,000 knots per square foot. This is really hard to even imagine let alone do.