Farahan Carpet: the raw material of handmade carpets wool

the raw material of a handmade carpet included: wool, silk, and cotton. Wool is used as the pile, silk as pile and warp and waft cotton as waft . in this post I want to talk about one of the raw material of handmade carpet: wool

WOOL

the most important animal’s fibers that people have been used before B.C till now is wool. the most important raw material in textile is wool. One of the most important country in producing wool is Australia. Some effective factors on the wool quality are the weather situation, type of nutrition and the condition of breeding sheep.

the best wool for handmade carpet

According to the quality of wool, classified it to four groups: classy wool, second-rate wool, third-rate wool, and fourth-rate wool. The best wool is classy wool which the origin of it is Spain but because of the high-quality today, many countries produce it. The feature that makes this wool the best is reversibility, enough strength, delicacy, high quality in spinning and etc. so famous brands use this wool for producing best clothes and handmade carpets.

The second rate of wool has good enough strength and reversibility but not as good as the classy wool.

The next one is third rate wool that its ‘origin is England. It’s thicker than two others and also the reversibility and the flexibility is lower than the others so it’s shinier.

The last one is forth rate wool that is the thicken and has low reign so it’s too shiny and used in low-quality handmade carpet.

Handmade carpet wool classification

The other classification is according to the cut wool: 6 to 8-month lamb’s wool, 12 to 14-month lamb’s wool, whether’s wool, tanning wool, dead wool, and low-quality wool.

In this classification, the best wool is 12 to14 month lamb’s wool because it’s soft and it has enough flexibility and reversibility. And dead wool, whether’s wool, tanning wool, and low-quality Wool are worth and not suitable for carpeting.

Iranian Handspun Wool

Totally the wool which produced in Iran has the low crease and is soften and it is said that one the most suitable wool for carpeting is Persian wool. Some types of Persian wool named Kermanshah wool, Khorasan wool, south wool, Baluch wool.

In the past Farahan region had very high-quality wool suitable for weaving carpets but unfortunately today because of immigration to big cities, changes in weather situation there is no production of wool so the required wool for carpeting import from other cities.

different colors of wool

Some of the important factors affected by wool quality are fiber length, softening, the same diameter and uniformity of the wool. In terms of color, wool classified in white, cream, brown, blond, black and gray. The best one for producing handmade carpet is white wool because in dyeing process you can dye it in what color you want. Colored wool actually has a limitation in dying.

Sheep Shearing

sheep shearing has done manually and mechanically. In manual sheep shearing, two instruments for removing fibers from the sheep body surface are used, due to the early fatigue of the wool, the length of the wool is increased and the possibility of damage to the sheep’s body is also high. In Automatic sheep shearing, despite the high speed of the machine, there are no problems, but the wool worker should have the skill of using the machine. In Iran, despite the many advantages of the machine method, the manual method is still used, which does not have much effect on wool quality.

Before the sheep shearing may wash the sheep, which is called Gordeshour. This first wash has many benefits, such as increasing the wool productivity, packaging,  It is easier to transport and prevent the transmission of disease to workers and livestock, but it should be noted that the wool does not become scuffed or felted.

sheep shearing is typically in spring but varies according to weather conditions. sheep shearing ‘s time in Iran is usually in the spring, but sometimes also in autumn, although the quality of wool in autumn and Spring is quite diverse. Spring fleece is longer and heavier than fleeces, and autumn wool is lighter and softer. In general, spring wool has better quality.

spinning wool

Wool spinning is done in two ways: manually or automatically.  Antiquates discovered which returns before B.C show that  Hand spinning prevalent from thousands of years ago. Today hand spinning has done by nomads and countrywomen in Kordestan, Fars more than other cities. Although Automatic spinning has been done faster and uniformly, the quality of hand spinning is undeniable because the handspun wool is shining and soft and has good strength.

sheep shearing in spring

spinning wool by hand