Hand knotted versus Hand Tufted The Cost
Hand Knotted or Hand Woven rugs can last a lifetime. Tufted Rugs or Hand tufted or Gun Tufted Rugs are disposable rugs. The oldest Hand Knotted Rug is almost 2400 years old. While that rug called the Pazaryk survived because it was frozen in a flooded tomb in Siberia for most of that time it is not at all unusual to see rugs 100 to 200 or more years old in everyday use in homes across America. A woven rug in a normal home can last 50 years or much more a Tufted Rug has a life expectancy of about 3 years. While Tufted Rugs can cost almost as much as some low end Oriental rugs the short life makes them far more expensive over the life of a rug.
Take a typical Hand Tufted Rug 5 by 7 feet I found on an Internet discount site cost $528
A slightly larger rug Hand Woven in Iran for sale on the same site was $713
$528 sound less expensive than $713 until you factor in the usable life of the rug.
The Tufted rug over 3 years is $176 per year. Even if we allow a life expectancy of 10 years the cost is still over $52 a year
While the Persian Rug over 50 years is $ 14.26 per year.
Why are tufted rugs such a bad buy?
A tufted rug is usually called hand tufted because it sounds nice and confuses people. Tufting, Gun Tufting and Hand Tufting is all refer to the same process. They take a tufting gun and shoot a loop of yarn through the back of a loose woven cloth similar to burlap. In fact in old ones they did use burlap. They create a pattern by alternating the colors that they use. Then to keep the pile from falling out they laminate the back with Latex. That is bad enough but Latex is expensive compared to the rest of the rug so they add filler to stretch the latex. The usual filler is ground limestone. If it were Vermont limestone it would not be that bad but Asian limestone especially Indian limestone often contains sulfur impurities. The sulfur on exposure to air and water begins to off-gas Sulfur Dioxide. This is the same substance that gives rotten eggs their terrible smell. In fact they add Sulfur Dioxide to natural gas so that you have a warning if there is a gas leak in your home. When the homeowner smells the rotten egg smell they take the rug to be cleaned. Most smells in a rub can be washed out but cleaning these rugs only makes the smell worse. Cleaners will often try to mask the smell but it comes back usually worse because the cleaning exposes more of the sulfur filler to the air. At that point all you can do is return it for a refund if you can or throw it away. I suppose that you could give it to someone you don’t like but that would not be nice.
Besides the smell they just don’t last as long or clean up as well. For one of these rugs to look good for 3 years is all they can expect. Of course if you don’t have children or pets and you keep people from walking on it they can last longer.
Hand woven pile rugs are made by a weaver tying knots of yarn or pile as it is called on a foundation of usually cotton or sometimes wool or silk. This creates a sturdy rug that is likely to give you years of use. Hand knotted Rugs hide the dirt and when they finally need to be cleaned they typically clean up well. Oriental rugs are a long term investment.
