Oriental rugs are knotted using a wide range variety of materials, the most used and well known one is the wool especially the one of sheep, the hair of camel comes as the second well known material, it is obvious that the oriental weather has a great influence on the best quality of those materials, the tender rain and the comfortable temperature have created a convenient atmosphere to develop them, the most known product countries of a good wool are Cashmere and Kurdistan.
Those materials before get used they pass through primary steps where they get washed, then arranged, after they pass by the carding step which consists of breaking up locks and unregulated clumps of fibre and this step aligns the fibres so they appear more parallel, then the rug maker spun the wool into a thread of wrap to be used later for the woof or the pile which is the upper layer of the rug.
The material used at weaving could vary from an oriental country to another one, for example in Kurdistan they prefer to use the wool of sheep they like its softness and sheen. However in Tibet the nice shawl-wool is acquired from the goat’s wool. In Iraq the hair of camel is the most preferred material to weave with. Another famous material used in weaving is the silk; of course we can’t ignore such material, which is known by its fitness, the most known oriental countries that produce silk are India, Persia and China.