Machine made rugs

One out of a thousand women buys a handmade floorcovering. But for modern power looms, most of us would still be weaving rag carpets or perhaps gathering rushes to cover our floors.

Fortunately, within limitations, machines can reproduce the carpets of any time and any country. Every big carpet mill main­tains a staff of skilled artists who translate the historic designs of the world into loom patterns to be woven by machinery.

They are usually successful in capturing the characteristic design and colors of the original.

Unfortunately there is always of necessity a certain mechanical perfection about them so that the irregularities of the more primitive pieces can only be simulated. The color variations of yarn dyed by hand in small quantities is absent.

And the superb refinement of detail in a Persian great rug or a French Savonnerie can never be exactly reproduced, for the finest machine-made fabric has only 127 tufts to the square inch.