Village Weavers
Carpet weaving in the village of Thana Ghazni, Rajasthan North West India. The weavers usually weave for around 3 hours maximum each day. Weaving in such fine detail for longer durations can bring increased occupational health risks. Hence, the loom is often shared between other family members or friends to suit. Its all very sociable, each family home usually has a loom with weavers often interchanging between different looms and homes each making a contributions to each others carpet.
Monkey Trouble at the loom
The local Rhesus Macaques love to steal the colourful wools intended for the rugs. Looking up at the trees around the village you'll often see colourful displays of discarded strands of wool left behind by the monkeys. The monkeys, however, are quite tolerated around the village on religious grounds, as well as be excellent look outs and sounding the alarm when king cobras and leopards enter the village, as they sometimes do.
Persian knotting
You can see in detail here the time consuming and highly skilled process of tying the Persian knot to the weft and weave or the foundation. The tying of each Persian knot is a similar process as tying a shoe lace. Each knot tied is then cut from the wool or silk yarn with a small knife called a "Chaghoo". The reaming tail end of the knot left on the rug forms a single piece of pile. A process that's repeated over and over, often millions of times to create a single Persian knotted carpet .
Impact on village life
N. K. Choudhary founder of Jaipur Rugs Foundation explains the wonderful benefits and lifestyle changes carpet weaving has brought to the communities of rural India.
Background to jaipur rugs
N. K. Choudhary explains the background to Jaipur Rugs Foundation and its path to social empowerment for the rural artisan weavers in the traditionally agriculturally dependent villages of rural India.