created by: iqs14@yahoo.com
Kerala Creations Emporium  
 
  Kashmiri Carpets 05/18/2025 6:27am (UTC)
   
 


Kashmiri Carpets





A carpet may well be the most expensive purchase from your trip to Kashmir but it is a lifelong investment. Kashmiri carpets are known the world over for two things - they are handmade, never machine made, and they are always knotted, never tufted. It is extremely instructive to watch a carpet being made - your dealer can probably arrange this for you.

Stretched tightly on a frame is the warp of a carpet. The weft threads are passed through, the 'taleem' or design and colour specification are then worked out on this. A strand of yarn is looped through the warp and weft, knotted and then cut. The yarn used normally is silk, wool or both. Woollen carpets always have a cotton base (warp & weft), while silk usually has a cotton base. Sometimes however, the base is also of silk, in which case you will see that the fringe is silk, and the cost increases proportionately. Occasionally, carpets are made on a cotton base, mainly of woollen pile with silk yarn used as highlights on certain motifs.

When the dealer specifies the percentage of each yarn used, he is taking into account the yarn used for the base too. Therefore, a carpet with a pure silk pile may be referred to as "80 per cent silk carpet". Do not be alarmed! He is merely stating that the warp and weft are not of silk.




A third type of yarn staple, also referred to as mercerised cotton, is also mentioned here, although it is by no means traditionally Kashmiri, but a man-made fibre. Its shine is not unlike that of silk, although in price it is much lower than silk, but more expensive than wool. Staple carpets are made to fill a slot in the market – customers demand carpets, which are not unlike silk in appearance so as to blend with the decor of their houses. One important difference between silk and staple though is that pure silk is far lighter than staple per unit area. 




Carpet weaving in Kashmir was not originally indigenous but is thought to have come in by way of Persia. Till today, most designs are distinctly Persian with local variations. One example, however, of a typical Kashmir carpet is the "tree of life". Persian design notwithstanding, any carpet woven in Kashmir is referred to as Kashmiri. The colour-way of a carpet and its details, differentiate it from any other carpet. It should be kept in mind that although the colours of Kashmiri carpets are more subtle and muted than elsewhere in the country, only chemical dyes are used - vegetable dyes have not been available now for a hundred years.



The knotting of carpet is the most important aspect, determining its durability and value, in addition to its design. Basically, the more knots per square inch, the greater its value and durability. Count the number of knots on the reverse of carpet in any one square inch, and it should be roughly the same as the dealer tells you, give or take 10 knots. If you are told that a carpet contains 360 knots, and your count indicates about 10 less, it simply means that the weft has not been evenly combed down in parts -- this is not a fault, and several random checks throughout the carpet will even go above the figure of the dealer's estimate. Also, there are single and double-knotted carpets. You can quite easily identify one from the other on the reverse of the carpet. The effect that it has on the pile too is important - a double-knotted carpet has a pile that bends when you brush it one way with your hand, and stands upright when it is brushed in another direction. A single knotted carpet is fluffier and more resistant to the touch, there is no 'right' and 'wrong' side to brush it.


Points to keep in mind when choosing a carpet:

* Whether it has been made of silk pile on silk base, silk pile on cotton base, silk and wool on cotton base or wool on cotton base.

* The number of knots on the reverse of the carpet; whether one or more line in the design has been omitted completely in which case the pattern looks lopsided;

* Whether any element in the design has been wrongly woven so that one motif is larger or smaller at one end than the corresponding motif at another end, etc.

* Whether each motif or element of design has clear, crisp outlines; blurred edges indicate a fault in the weaving.

* Whether the edges of the carpet are crooked as if it had been incorrectly mounted on the frame, so that one end is broader than another.

 Namda is widely acclaimed to have been originated during 11th century when Akbar, the great Mughal ruler was on throne. History of the periodreveals that the king ordered his exechequer to arrange for a siutable coverage for his horse who was affected by biting cold. In reponce to the proclaimation that was done in this behalf, a wise old man from the east stood up and offered his intention of felt. he was Nubi by name. The man manufactured the felt himself and embroidered the same in multicoloured beautiful designs. The felt so made aws given the title of Namda after the name of its manufacturer Nubi. The King Akbar is said to have been immensely impressed by the workmanship of Nubi and is said to have granted him villages in honour. The art of felting wool into namdas has come from Yarkand.

Namdas are a kind of mattress, originally from the state of Jammu and Kashmir. These are made by felting the wool rather than weaving it. A low quality wool mixed with a small quantity of cotton is used to manufacture namdas. They are usually of two types, plain and embroidered. Formerly, woolen yarn was used for embroidery, but now acrylic yarn (cashmelon) is in use. Namdas and gabbas are embroidered with thread, which gives colour, beauty and strength to them. This cottage industry is concentrated in Anantnag, Rainawari and Baramula.



Prices of namdas depend upon their quality of wool, pattern (plain or embroidery), size of the product and the neatness in designs. Far less expensive are these colorful floor coverings made from woolen and cotton fiber which has been manually pressed into shape. Prices vary with the percentage of wool- a Namda containing 80% wool being more expensive than one containing 20% wool. Chain stitch embroidery in woolen and cotton thread is worked on these rugs 
 
  Our Links
  Home
  Mr Ravees Mir
  Kerala Creations Emporium
  Kashmiri Carpets
  Kashmiri Shawls
  Kashmiri Orginal Saffron
  THE OLD CITY
  KASHMIR HANDICRAFTS
  About Kashmir
  Photo Gallery
  Editor

Last Updated on November 2008
  Ravees Mir Says
The inspiration for the creation of the arts and crafts of Kashmir is the paradisiacal land of Kashmir in its physical and metaphysical meaning and expression. The artistic genius of the Kashmiri people as expressed in the fields of literature, poetry, literary images, shawl-making, embroidery, embroidered floor-coverings, wood-work and wood-carving, papier-mache and metal-work has been studied by the author, in the beauty of their composition, history, making and design movement.

The arts and crafts of Kashmir testify to the Kashmiri artist being a true lover of nature. Nature is reflected in the polished mirror of the designs and decorative patterns of ornamentation of the Kashmiri arts. Poetry in form to reach the realm of thought, idea, dream and vision that shows joy in this world as the world is joyful in Him.


The Kashmiri artist or craftsman can afford only two luxuries – the birds and the flowers – which grow wild, and the land holds one in charm by its free beauty. This natural beauty and the beauty of its arts and crafts have made Kashmir famous through the ages.

Also, Sufism, Islamic form of mysticism, has as in the case of the whole of the Islamic world permeated the Kashmiri society, though and literature and the philosophy f the creation of the arts and crafts of Kashmir, which also fulfill though in a meager way the economic needs of the maker. So it is metaphorically the desire for meeting the harmonious lip to express the pain of love, which results in the profound meaning of expression of the Kashmiri arts.

As in the weaving of the poetry of the harmonious beauty of shawls painstakingly, in one of the most difficult weaves of the world, each strand of thread moves in a static medium with such sinuous grace and force of expression as not only to enchant one in its fineness of grace and sensuous beauty but also to speak of the attractive, sensitive and appealing to the senses beauty – which intrigues, charms, captivates and absorbs the one touched and affected by it – of the land from which the materials of making and forming and composing and drawing the shawl spring forth. In a measure of transcendence the radiant and magnificent patterns and designs, in the case of Kashmiri metal-work, take back to the earth – from the material to the de-materialisation of the object afforded by the luminosity and movement of the line of the decorative pattern, though on the surface, to almost make one experience, if you like, something sacred – the bowels of which yield the raw materials and the rocks from which they are extracted. The Kashmiri embroidered rugs display the ‘soofyana rang’, while the wood-work and wood-carving praises the nature by taking it back to the woods. The papier-mache decorative designs in their miniature style of painting portray the verdant green and colorful landscape and the flowers in bloom and singing birds of the beautiful valley of Kashmir.

Nature speaks in the Kashmiri arts and crafts in the language derived mainly from Persian aesthetics a development of Islamic aesthetics – in the expression of the design of the arts; which has certainly taken Islam to be the influence and hence is born of the spirit of Islam itself.

The evolution of the significant and important ornamental design lay-out in Kashmiri arts and crafts is defined by the term arabesque with its centre being everywhere and nowhere to be seen as it is a continuous pattern so intricate as to make the eye tired of detail and carry it in a level of manifestation to the feeling, dream and vision of the transcendental meaning of life. It expresses the unity of existence in the continuous cycle of creation and re-creation with its underlying factor being that the things come and go but what remains constant is this very cycle and this passion and urge and love of creating and creation, celebrated by man by creating himself, as a defiance of nature (by creating a composition of a universe of art) but ultimately realizing his complete dependence upon it in thought, idea, dream, vision and material of existence and creating.

Thus there are levels of manifestation in the metaphorical and aesthetic expression (on the surface appearing to be endless cursive shapes, circles, polygonal figures and arabesque) to be explored and understood according to one’s knowledge and gift of ability to conceive the picture or the painting with its order, beauty, balance and harmony, which is truly man’s existence and which brings forth the expression of art. This beauty, poetry, music and dance of life is a way of bringing about recollection and of awakening within man an awareness of that supreme Beauty for posterity, of which all terrestrial beauty is but a pale reflection, for as Rumi says, as translated by Nicholson, that Kings lick the earth of which the fair are made. For God has mingled in the dusty earth a draught of Beauty from His choicest cup. It is that, fond lover – not these lips of clay – you are kissing with a hundred ecstasies. Think, then, what must it be when underfiled!

And the artist is a lyre whose strings are plucked by the Creator in a musical harmony with the embellishing ornament stylisd to the point of losing all resemblance with nature and obeying only the laws of rhythm – being a real graphic of rhythms with each line undulating in complementary phases, and each surface having its inverse counterpart for a balanced, harmonious composition – of the design of movement or the movement of design. Thus the ornament tries to stop the mind of the onlooker affected by it or the one who appreciates it and is absorbed in it from attaching itself on any particular form. This hindrance is to dissuade and stop one from arranging a definitive saying of “I” as an image says “I”.




Ravees Mir (Gemologist)

created by: iqs14@yahoo.com This website was created for free with Own-Free-Website.com. Would you also like to have your own website?
Sign up for free