13 May HOW DOES THE WEAVER MAKE THE DESIGN OF THE RUG?
There are two ways the weaver uses to make the finished rug.
The most common technique is cartoon mapping. This is a detailed illustration of the carpet design, a full-scale graph on paper which is used by workshops and tells the weaver which colour is used for every knot to be used. Each tiny square on the graph paper represents one knot.
The whole rug therefore is represented knot by knot on the full-scale graph. If the rug has a symmetrical design, then it is possible to make only one quarter of the actual rug in cartoon mapping, which is repeated in all quarters.
However, designs in smaller tribal rugs are often passed from one generation to the other and are done by memory.
The second technique used are Talim cards. This is a method used is larger workshops in order to produce similar rugs simultaneously. One person reads the color and number of knots to several weavers, and they follow the readers instructions. When employing this method, it is possible that the weaver might never know what the finished product will look like until it has actually been completed!