Beginning with the first hide being thrown onto a cave floor, man has created a variety of ways to keep his feet from touching his home ground. From rushes tossed onto the dirt or stone floors to the silken carpets of the Orient, what someone walks upon in his home has determined his wealth for centuries. With the Industrial Revolution came a faster way of making carpets, and in the 1950's when the tufting process, along with the invention of synthetic fibers and reliable carpet dyes were invented, the Carpet Boom exploded.
Still, the most valuable carpet remains the intricately hand knotted creation of the desert nomad. These carpets can be sold for sums equivalent to other works of fine art. Though chrome carpet dyes are used in the Middle East today, the pigments derived from plants and insects are still used. The natural beauty of their color and their durability makes the time consuming, expensive process of producing them worthwhile. While it is the women who spin the wool or cotton and tie up to thousands of knots per inch on their collapsible looms, it is the men who pick, dig, dry, grind and steep the leaves, stems and roots of the plants they and their ancestors have known will produce the most vibrant and subtle colors.
In the 18th century, the English towns of Axminster and Wilton were chartered as carpet making towns. Axminster uses massive looms that weave bobbins of carpet yarn and backing together to form complex patterns that can contain up to 16 different colors. Electronic grippers seize the loops and a knife cuts them. These carpets are woven with British and Irish wool for durability, New Zealand wool for its brightness and dyeing properties and an 80/20 combination of wool and nylon, which takes advantage of nylon's resiliency and its resistance to abrasion. Less than 1% of the carpets worldwide are wool, for even though they age well and are easy to clean, they are expensive.
In the USA, its synthetics that have made carpet affordable for the masses. Nylon makes up 70% of all residential carpets. Polypropylene and polyester are also used. Polypropylene resists stains, fading and moisture while polyester is bulky and keeps a clear color throughout its life.
Modern carpets are made by a process known as tufting. A machine resembling a gigantic sewing machine, with anywhere from 800 to 2,000 needles working in sync, pulls the twisted fiber from huge spools through the primary backing and a small hook (looper) grabs it and holds it in place. If the looper remains in place, then a loop pile carpet is made. If the looper rocks back against the knife behind it and the yarn is cut, then a pile carpet is produced. The two processes can also be combined so that a cut and loop pattern results.
Next is the dyeing of the carpet (though the yarn can be dyed prior to tufting). The two major ways color is applied to carpets are beck batch dyeing and continuous dyeing. The beck batch method consists of stitching the ends of the carpet together and then running it through vats of carpet dye and water for hours. The carpet and dye can also be put in a pressurized vat, or cooked together as well. During the continuous dyeing process, the carpet remains flat while carpet dye is directly applied to its loops by a spray, jet or screen printing application. This is how multi-colored and printed carpets are made.
Carpet fibers can be dyed before they even meet the tufting machine. Solution Dyeing is the only way to color polypropylene (olefin) though nylon is sometimes dyed this way as well. Synthetics arrive at the factory in bales consisting of millions of strands, which are placed in a machine that extrudes them as filaments. Carpet dye can be added to this machine so that the filaments are dyed before they are twisted into yarn. Differential Dyeing chemically treats the yarn so that it will react differently to the carpet dye, resulting in different shades within the carpet itself.
After the carpet is dyed and dried, a latex coating is applied to both the carpet's primary backing and a secondary backing (woven polypropylene). The two are then squeezed together in a large heated press. This is followed by the shearing, which mows the carpet to a uniform height. Finally, it's ins pected, rolled, wrapped and shipped.