Hand-Knotted Rugs

Each knot of the rug's pile is tied by hand onto the warp threads of the loom, one at a time, by an artisan working with a knife and a pile of dyed wool. A typical 8x10 hand-knotted rug has hundreds of thousands of knots and takes months to complete.

A few months to over a year, depending on the rug's size and the knot density. Higher knot counts mean finer pattern detail and longer production time.

"Better" depends on what you're optimizing for. Hand-knotted is denser, longer-lasting, and holds finer detail — best for rugs you'll keep for decades. Hand-tufted is softer underfoot, faster to make, and more accessibly priced — best for rugs you'd be comfortable replacing in 10 to 15 years.

Flip the rug over. The back of a hand-knotted rug shows the same pattern as the front, with visible individual knots. Hand-tufted rugs have a fabric backing covering the construction; machine-made rugs have an even, mechanical knot pattern.

Time and labor. Each knot is a person's hand and a person's hour. We work directly with artisan workshops to keep prices below specialty-retailer markups, but the floor is set by the work itself — there's no shortcut to a hand-knotted rug.

Vacuum weekly without a beater bar. Spot-clean spills immediately with cold water and mild wool detergent. Every two to three years, professional wool-rug cleaning. With this care, hand-knotted wool rugs routinely last 30 to 50 years.