The carpet is made of high-quality pure wool, and then processed through the processes of hair selection, washing, combing, dyeing, carpeting, cutting, washing and so on. It has the characteristics of excellent wool quality, unique craftsmanship and elegant pattern, which is unique in the world and is China's main export handicrafts.
Carpets are floor coverings processed from raw materials such as cotton, wool, silk, hemp, coconut palm or chemical fibers. These include hand-fleeled carpets, machined rugs and handmade felt carpets. In a broad sense, it also includes bedding, seat cushions, wall hangings, tents, saddleback mattresses, door curtains, table blankets, etc. In the Neolithic period, people twisted animal hair into threads and woven them into thick woolen fabrics for paving the floor. Carpet fragments unearthed from Eastern Han tombs in China are typical hand-fleeled carpets. During the Ming and Qing dynasties, on the basis of inheriting traditional carpet craftsmanship, combined with the characteristics of brocade and embroidery art, a unique carpet pattern with auspicious meanings was created, and it has been passed down all the time. In the 20th century, Beijing and Tianjin established enterprises for the production and export of carpets, which became the key production areas of Chinese carpets. The world's traditional production areas for hand-fleeled carpets are concentrated in East Asia, Central Asia and countries at the junction of Europe and Asia. Since the British first Brussels carpet loom in 1720, the mechanism carpet came into being, and the mechanism carpet has accounted for 99% of the world's total consumption, and handmade carpets account for only 1%. There are many classification methods for carpets, according to the manufacturing process, there are hand-planted carpets, hand-woven plain carpets, hand-tufted carpets, handmade felt carpets, and mechanical carpets; According to the use, there are carpets, kang carpets, wall carpets, prayer blankets, etc.; According to raw materials, there are wool carpets, silk carpets, jute carpets, chemical fiber carpets, etc.
The great poet of the Tang Dynasty, Bai Juyi, has the famous phrase "the ground does not know that the cold people want to be warm, and less people are taken for lichen" in the poem "Red Thread Carpet". According to documents, from the Tang and Song dynasties to the Ming and Qing dynasties, there were more and more varieties of carpets, and the carpets made were often made of cotton, wool, hemp and paper rope as raw materials. The woven carpets produced in China use extremely strong yarn strands for warp and ground weft yarns, and the warp yarns are tied into colored coarse wool weft yarns according to the pattern to form plush yarns, and then woven through shearing, brushing and other processes. Its front is densely covered with towering plush, which has a solid texture and good elasticity. In 1966, a cotton blanket was unearthed in Lanxi, Zhejiang Province, which was 2.51 meters long and 1.18 meters wide, with plain weave tissue, piled on both sides, and flat and thick. The material used was identified as grass cotton fiber. This cotton carpet was woven from the Southern Song Dynasty. This is the earliest cotton blanket ever recorded. It can be seen that the carpet weaving process had reached a very high level at that time.
