It is possible to weave rugs, with or without a pile surface, on hand looms. Almost any material can be used for hand-weaving, including plastic strips and some forms of rope. Weaving speed can be increased by the use of a chain-and-pedal drive similar to that used on bicycles. In modern times, handweaving is mainly limited to design development and study in educational institutions and to the most costly floor coverings, frequently made to order and considered fine works of art.

Ingrain

After 200 years of use, the ingrain became almost obsolete during the 1930s because of its relatively poor wearing qualities. Also called Kidderminster or Scotch, it is flat ribbed, reversible, and completely without pile, and usually could be made with two- or three-ply warp and weft yarns, dyed before weaving.

Design on the surface of the carpet was easily produced by bringing to the surface, at the chosen area, the desired colour of the weft; the latter almost completely formed the surface colouring. Although the warp intruded into the design, its colour was carefully chosen to blend satisfactorily. The term Venetian has been applied to lesser grades of ingrain carpet.

Wire-formed piles

Brussels carpet, with uncut looped pile formed by round wires, was first introduced about the mid-18th century. Shortly after, Wilton followed with the development of bladed wires producing a cut pile. Both were capable of producing elaborate pile designs, and the Jacquard device was used with them from about the 1820s, when it replaced hand selection of coloured pile threads. Bigelow’s power principles were applied to the loom from about 1849. Pile not used for surface design is woven longitudinally into the body of the backing fabric. Brussels carpets, woven on the Wilton loom, but with their pile remaining uncut, are no longer sold in large quantities.

Tapestry is a printed pile yarn carpet that may be cut or uncut but must, by its nature, normally be one pile thread per dent. In order to make a design by a method other than printing yarn, more than one pile yarn per dent (five or six usually) is used with a jacquard. The term velvet, more common in the United States, is used to mean cut pile single frame; that is, plain carpet for which tapestry technique is not used. A velvet carpet is basically one of Wilton type. The term frame is often used instead of pile thread per dent, and a single frame carpet is therefore a plain carpet with one thread per dent.

Tapestry carpets were invented in Scotland in 1830 but are now virtually obsolete. Few of them were produced in the main carpet centres (Kidderminster, West Riding of Yorkshire, and Scotland) after World War II.

Typical high quality Wilton and Brussels carpets contain about 120 tufts per square inch with up to 13 rows per inch. Tapestry, generally up to about 80 tufts per square inch, but as low as 50, is possible. Velvet may be similar in density to tapestry, but not necessarily so; it can be made with pile as dense as Wilton if desired.

Wilton carpet can be produced on the “face-to-face” principle. Two carpets are simultaneously woven sandwiched one above the other, and the two are then cut apart by a reciprocating blade traversing the loom width. The linear rate of production is thus almost doubled; Jacquard designs can be produced by this method.

Loom-formed pile

Axminster carpets, in which all of the pile yarn is effectively used for design (unlike Wilton and Brussels that waste some “dead” pile yarn by hiding it in the body of the carpet) include spool, gripper, and chenille.

Spool looms were invented in the United States in 1876, and the gripper Axminster loom was developed about 1890. The chenille two-stage process was invented in Glasgow about 1830.

With the first loom, each row of pile is drawn from an individual spool, and two blades cut away the tufts when woven. On the gripper loom, each tuft is held by its beak-like gripper and taken from its yarn carrier to the fell of the carpet, the point at which the warp and weft intersect, after being precisely cut away by a traversing knife blade. One type of spool-gripper Axminster loom employs spools instead of a jacquard; the tufts are taken from them and woven on the gripper principle. Chenille pile (from the French word for caterpillar) is formed on the carpet loom by weaving the “fur,” or pile yarn, as a weft. The tufts are usually bound by cotton threads forming a long strand. The fur is woven in the first weaving process on normal cloth looms and cut longitudinally into the requisite patterned strips; pile yarn is woven as weft, and the warp is the cotton binding threads. A simple gauze or the lacelike leno weave is used to bind the weft pile yarn so that the pile does not fall away when the strips are cut, before they can be woven into the carpet.

Jute weft and cotton warp are common materials for Axminster carpets. All-wool pile is popular, although nylon–wool mixtures and various combinations of natural and man-made fibres are becoming common. Carpets made of 100 percent man-made fibres are increasing in popularity. Spool and gripper qualities average about 40 to 50 tufts per square inch, the two extremes being about 30 and 60.