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Gulf News
  • 8 months ago
How to spot an authentic Afghan carpet. Helpful tips on how to determine age, quality and authenticity when shopping for handmade carpets from Afghanistan. See more at: http://gulfnews.com/gntv
Transcript
00:00The Afghan carpet industry has been around for centuries and most of them who weave it
00:10have learned it from their parents. It's currently the largest Afghan export so it's absolutely
00:17crucial to the economy in terms of generating income as well. In Afghanistan we have different
00:21designs, one for example is called the Kazakh design. This is because Kazakh weavers coming
00:25from the Kazakh ethnicity have brought their own design into it. Then you've got one that
00:29is woven in the Turkmen areas. They're all 100% Afghan but it's just different ethnicities
00:33over there who have migrated into Afghanistan and brought their own sort of designs into
00:38it from what they know from their own places. They're very distinguishable as well. There
00:42are over 100 types of wool available that is used in carpets. It's cleaned and then
00:47given to people to spin. Once the wool is spun it's then dyed naturally. In Afghanistan
00:52the biggest dye is natural vegetable dyes. The most important factor to take into consideration
00:58when you're going to buy a carpet are the knots on the back of course, how fine the
01:02carpet is. The finer the knots are the better quality the carpet is. So I'll compare two
01:07carpets here for you so you can have a look. We've got this carpet here and the knotting
01:12on the back is 50 by 50 so it's a lot finer in quality compared to the red one here. So
01:19if you bring it closer you can see that these are a lot thicker than the ones here. So the
01:27blue one would be more expensive simply because it's a lot finer to knot. The way you can
01:32tell a handmade from a machine made carpet is by looking on the back of the carpet. All
01:36the knots that have come through the machine will be the same, will be absolutely identical.
01:41Whereas a handmade carpet no knots are the same. If you have a look you'll see that every
01:45single knot on the back is virtually different because it's handmade and it's made over a
01:51period of time of course so the person who's knotting the carpet would come and work for
01:57example 10 centimetres in one day then wait another day of course take a break for example
02:01or have a lot of other work on so they'd come back. A lot of people actually do it as hobbies
02:05that's why you see that no two knots are the same. The most distinguishing factor between
02:10the age of an old carpet and a new carpet of course is by looking at the tussles. If
02:15you have a look at the tussles of course of an old carpet such as this one you'll see
02:19that it's worn out and it's a lot older whereas a new one would be fairly new, white in colour
02:25and less used. A lot of people actually smell the carpet to see what generation the wool
02:32came from as well and how it's been used but of course you'd have to be an expert to do
02:37that. The best way to tell whether your wool carpet is actually 100% wool is to snip a
02:43bit off the top and burn it. Of course as you know wool doesn't burn so we'll just test
02:49a bit here and as you can see it just lights out and burns to ashes. It doesn't burn at
02:55all, it's not flammable. That's the best way to test your carpet. Not to snip too much
03:03off the top but just the bit which is enough to burn.
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