The Journey of a Hand Knotted Rug

Rugs are often one of the most underestimated design elements in the home or workplace, yet they play a crucial role in unifying décor. They bring together colours, patterns, and textures, while anchoring furniture in place. Choosing the right rug is key to creating a successful and cohesive interior design. 

At Source Mondial, we specialise in rug design, offering both unique bespoke creations and modifications of existing designs. Entrust us with the journey of transforming your concept through to the final product.

1. Wool Preparation

Shorn wool is detangled, cleaned and teased into individual strands and then spun into continuous lengths of yarn by hand or machine. 

2. Dyeing

The Dye Master carefully matches colour using different pigments to achieve perfection.

The yarns are immersed in huge vats over and over until the required shade is achieved.
The dyed yarn is left to dry naturally in the heat, fixing the colours.

3. Mapping the Design

The rug design is drawn to scale by hand to create a map for the weavers to work from. Each knot in the rug is carefully and meticulously mapped. In a 2.4m x 3.0m rug there can easily be over 1.1million knots!

4. Washing

The finished rug is removed from the loom, submerged in water for extensive washing by hand. Large wooden paddles are used to push the water through the pile making the rug colourfast. 

5. Drying

Rugs are dried in the sun on a stretcher which tightens the weave and stretches the rug to the correct size.

6. Finishing Touches

The rug is trimmed to a uniform pile using flat bladed shears, and specific design elements to define areas, where wool meets silk are carved out.

7. Delivery

The rug is inspected and then sent to port for air or sea shipment.