What is a Single Wefted Rug

Here I look at ugs that use Single Weft construction. I hope it is useful.

In this first video I look at a Persian Single Wefted Rug Fragment. What I mean by that is that there is one shed of weft between each row of knots. Please review this because the number of wefts is one of the most important clues in Rug ID.

When we wish to ID a Rug we should first look a the back and among other things check to see if there is a single row of weft(s) or 2 or more rows of weft.

If there is only one row of wefts then we can rule out many possibilities including virtually all Turkish. Turkmen, Afghan, Chinese, Central Asian as well as most Persian and Caucasian Rugs. So then we know that it is likely to be one of:

Hamadan Rugs

Senneh Rugs

Lilihan Rugs

Karaja Rugs

and less commonly

About half of Bahktiari Rugs

Some Kurdish Rugs

10% of all Baluch Rugs

and some Jewish rugs from Palestine prior to the establishment of the Nation State of Israel in 1948

Here we have an antique Malayer rug. it has single weft construction and is similar to a Hamadan but much more finely woven.

Here is a Malayer that I saw at Emanuel's in Seattle. I lost sound half way through but it is hopefully of value. 

Here is an Armenian single wefted Lilihan Rug that I saw at Richard Rothstein & Co. A leading Philadelphia Area Oriental rug store.

There are some old timers who claim "Single Wefted" is improper usage. At my behest the usage "Single Wefted" has  been adopted by resolution of The Academy of Oriental rugs in 2013. We use "Single Wefted" to describe a manner of rug technique that is crucial to understand in Rug ID.