Bob Litner, age 14, of Bessemer, Ala., for his question:
WHEN DID WE START MAKING RUGS?
Prehistoric men used animal skins on the floors of their caves and huts for much the same reason we use rugs today: for warmth, comfort and quiet. When man learned to weave, a rug was probably one of the first items he made.
Museums have fragments of rugs that were made about 3,500 years ago. No one knows exactly when rugweaving started, but it was probably somewhere in Asia during ancient times.
Ancient Egyptian temples were decorated with rugs but these were flat textiles, without piles. The art of Oriental rugmaking, with deep piles, developed in the Near East.
The Moors brought the art of rugweaving to Europe when they conquered Spain in the 700s. Tapestry weaving started a bit later, in the south of France.
By the 1450s, a carpetmakers' guild had been organized in Paris.
Weaving got its first real start in England in the 1300s when Edward III invited Flemish weavers to his country. They made expensive tapestries that were used as wall hangings. The people during this time covered their floors with rushes. Then during the 1400s heavier tapestries designed for the floor were made, and the art of rugmaking was launched.
In North America, early settlers made their own rugs from rags. Some of the colonists also imported woven rugs from England.
Trading ships brought rugs from the Orient about this time And it wasn't long until the American Indians learned to make beautiful rugs.
About 1800, a weaver from Lyon, France, named Joseph Jacquard, invented the loom that bears his name. This loom arranged the different colors of yarn to go into a pattern through a device like the roll for a player piano.
In 1839, a power loom for making carpets was invented in Lowell, Mass. Erastus Bigelow perfected the loom two years later.
In 1876 another American, this one named Halcyon Skinner, perfected a power driven Axminster loom. Many improvements have been made since then, of course.
Today, both natural and synthetic fibers are used to make rugs and carpets. The natural fibers are wool and cotton. Synthetic fibers include nylon, polypropylene olefin, rayon, acetate, acrylics and modacrylics.
The terms rug and carpet are often used interchangeably. But generally, a rug covers only part of a floor and is not fastened down. A carpet covers the entire floor.
Carpets today are made in various widths, such as 9, 12 or 15 feet. Rugs may be made in prefinished standard sizes, such as 9 by 12, or cut from rolls of carpet.
Broadloom refers to carpets made on looms or machines more than six feet wide. It is simply a term of measurement and does not refer to quality, style or method of construction.
There are six distinct groups of Oriental rugs: Persian, Turkish, Turkmen, Caucasian, Chineses and India rugs.