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Aaaaahhhh, I slide out of bed and sink my toes into the warmth of our carpet. I LOVE this carpet, a concoction of our own, made of floor tiles, enabling us to achieve the very precise look and color combination we want. I pad across the bedroom, leaving the beloved tiles, and hit the hardwoods of the bathroom. Then? I perch upon the place we have a small, bound carpet to keep things toasty in there.

Imagine. No carpet. All bare, cold floors. What would a pair of bare feet do?

The idea of carpet stretches as far back as 6000 BC, where there has been found evidence of sheared goat and sheep wool for the hair, and then woven into larger forms. In 1000 AD, Marco Polo finds rugs being made in Central Anatolia. And in 1540, Henry the VIII's Cardinal Wolsey imports Turkish rugs to England. 1791 marked the beginning of the carpet industry in the United States, as introduced by William Sprague, at the first woven carpet mill in Philadelphia. But it was Erastus Bigelow, and his power loom, that changed the industry here, and allowed the middle class consumers of the industrial revolution of the late 18th and early 19th centuries able to buy carpet. Extremely popular were the Karastan rugs created from revolutionary looms, made to simulate the original handmade rugs, woven through the back.

Around this time, the late 1800s, in a small town called Dalton, GA, the tufted carpet industry was gaining a foothold, carving out a place in carpet history to this day. In the mid 1940s- and early 1950's, tufted carpet becomes widely popular, an is an early predecessor to "shag".

Between 1970 and 1995, tufted carpet production increased by 300%. There are small toys, loose bits of change, and countless food articles forever lost in this trend. Have you ever tried to vacuum heavily tufted carpet? You can't. You need a rake. And today, Dalton is the carpet capitol of the world.

In the late part of last century, and the earliest of this, carpet tiles have made great headway in popularity. Carpeting has always been affected just as other social/home making pleasures...economic, and fashion pressures force the industry to constantly evolve. The mass market demand requires developments in man made material, different loom widths, and the best efficiency in machines possible. The carpet trade has become able to offer very particular tastes in price, and fashion due to the development of tiles, printing and fibers. There are literally thousands of choices from which to choose.

The advantage of a current trend such as the carpet squares, or tiles, is that, very simply, a 12 inch by 12 inch square can be removed, as necessary, due to stain or destruction (not that we would know about that with our FOUR children), without replacing the entire room's worth of carpeting. Another benefit is the ability to use an endless selection of colors, and textures, creating a unique flooring no one else will ever own. Where more traditional carpet choices leave you somewhat subject to the manufacturers decision, with the carpet tiles, your imagination is the only restriction.

Sink your feet into the carpet that makes your house feel like home. Your creativity is the only boundary.

Learn more about this author, Allison Tannery.
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