Is my rug handmade? Upload a photo and find out
Free rug identifier: see how your rug was made, its design, likely origin, quality, condition and estimated value in seconds.
The back tells the most: it shows whether the rug was knotted by hand. Daylight, no flash.
Photos are read once and not stored. Results are estimates from photos, not an appraisal.
How to tell if a rug is handmade
Check the back first
On a hand-knotted rug the back shows the same pattern as the front, made of tiny individual knots, with small irregularities. A machine-made back looks like a perfectly even grid.
Look at the fringe
On a handmade rug the fringe is the ends of the warp threads running through the whole rug. Fringe sewn or glued onto the edge usually means machine-made or tufted.
Tufted rugs have a cloth back
Hand-tufted rugs are shot with a tufting gun into a canvas, then glued and covered with a cloth or felt backing. If the back is covered, it is almost never hand-knotted.
Small flaws are a good sign
Slightly uneven sides, color bands where a new batch of wool was used (abrash) and tiny design shifts are signs of a person at a loom, not defects.
Count the knots
More knots per square inch means finer detail and more work. Most village and tribal rugs have 60 to 150 knots per square inch; fine city rugs can pass 300.
Flat-woven rugs have no pile
Kilims and soumaks are woven, not knotted, so they are thin and often reversible. Handmade flat-weaves show the same slight irregularities as knotted rugs.