Finding the best product for your needs does not always come easy, especially when you do not know a lot about the thing you are planning to get. In the current markets there is a wide variety of models and types regardless of what industry we are talking about. Even if you have a general idea about something and have owned similar products before, you cannot be certain that it will satisfy your needs nor that you will buy the right thing. And when it can be both handmade by an expert and machine-made for commercial purposes, things become even more difficult. There are many things that we need around the home that can be made either custom and unique, or in factories by machines that create thousands or even tens of thousands of the same unit.
Rugs for a Beautiful Home
As a homeowner, it goes without saying that you want your interior to be as good as it can and check all the boxes you need from it. In this article we explore one of the things that every room of every house usually needs, rugs. Rugs, and carpets, are necessary for so many different reasons. Traditionally they have been used to make the inside warmer, to allow a softer and more comfortable surface for walking and sitting, and of course for decor and aesthetic purposes. Handmade rugs used to be very exclusive and expensive back in the day because of how long it takes to make one and how much skill and effort goes into doing it. Carpet masters were highly praised members of society as they made masterpieces of practicality and art with their rugs. However, just like many other industries, rugs changed with the onset of industrialization when factories appeared and when quantity overtook quality.
Current State of Affairs
Nowadays, there is an effort to go back to how things were at least on a smaller scale and offer the customers authentic, artistic products that can never be made in a factory in a large-scale commercial operation. Handmade carpets are still highly praised, expensive, durable, and beautiful. They are always a better option than a machine-made carpet, if the financial situation and other factors allow for it of course. But a new type of problem is present in the 21st century now that technology has advanced so much. There is a legitimate problem to tell certain rugs apart even if one was handmade and the other was machine-made. Those who know what to look for do not really struggle, but most people do. In order to tell the difference, you need to learn what to pay attention to. In the following sections we talk about how you can tell the difference between handmade and machine-made rugs so that you never overpay for a factory rug while you are browsing for a genuine handmade masterpiece. To learn more about high-quality rugs, make sure to check here.
Inspect the Fringe
First and foremost, you need to pay close attention to the fringe of the rug you are thinking of buying. They tell an important story about how quickly the rug has been made. On genuine, handmade rugs that are creations of experts who have spent years making them, the fringe should be an extension of the rug itself. On the other hand, if the fringe is obviously added afterwards on an already finished rug, it is all a machine-made creation and should therefore be cheaper. The best handmade rugs have fringes that are the same material used previously on the main part of the rug and there is nothing connecting them. This is quite easy to spot and yet a very important part in judging who made the rug and how.
Check the Edges for the Right Finish
Edges are always a good place to see how and where the rug was made and whether or not a pair of human hands did the entire project. Machine made rugs always have surgings and bindings along the edge finishings. Rugs made by master craftsmen that took days and weeks to complete do not. Instead, there are no visible stitches because there was great care used in making them as well as techniques that a machine can never ever replicate. As you can see, the very sides and ends of rugs can paint a clearer picture and help you come up with answers as to which rug came of a factory line and which was carefully and lovingly made in a master’s workshop.
Turn the Other Side
So far we have given you two very good ways to spot a difference between custom and factory rugs. However, none of them are really the easiest way to do so. The actual easiest way to make sure is to turn the rug around and look at its backside. When knots and weaves are done by hand, they can never be identical. Turning the backside and paying attention to how similar and even the knots and weavings are is arguably the best judge of whether you are holding a handmade piece or not. On handmade products these can never be 100% even because it is impossible to do so by hand, and that is okay. In addition, the more details there are on the backside and the more intricate the designs and patterns in the weavings and knots, the more likely it is a handmade model.
Machines cannot replicate many of the things that a human hand can do and a human mind can think. Handmade rugs are more valuable and prettier exactly because of the details and the skills of the person making them. Overall, detailed and overall uneven backside on a rug means that it is a proper, genuine handmade rug that you will surely be satisfied with. Machine made rugs lack intricate details and imaginative patterns of knots and weaves. Moreover, they are all identical down to the smallest parts, again, something that is never possible when a human is doing it. A machine can be programmed and it does not make mistakes.