How to tell a hand-knotted Moroccan rug from a machine-made copy

Search for a Moroccan rug online and you will find the same look at very different prices. Some of those rugs are knotted by hand. Many are not: they are tufted with a hand tool and glued, or made by machine from synthetic fibers, and printed with a Moroccan-style pattern.

None of that is a problem if you know what you are buying. The problem is when the listing doesn't say. Here is how to tell the difference.

Four ways a rug can be made

Hand-knotted

Every tuft of pile is a knot, tied by hand around the warp threads of a loom, then cut. A row of knots is locked in place with a few lines of weaving, and the next row goes on top. It is the slowest way to make a rug, and the strongest. Every ZenRug is made this way.

Hand-tufted

Yarn is punched through a canvas backing with a tufting gun. The loops are held in place with a layer of glue, and a fabric backing is stuck over it to hide the glue. Much faster than knotting, but the glue weakens over the years and the pile can come loose.

Flatweave

Kilims and other flatweaves are woven by hand, but with no pile at all. It is a real, traditional technique, just a different kind of rug: thin, light and often reversible.

Machine-made

Made on a power loom, usually from synthetic fibers such as polypropylene, and sometimes with the pattern printed on. Fast and cheap, but it wears quickly and can't be repaired the way a knotted rug can.

1. Turn it over

The back of a rug tells you almost everything.

• Hand-knotted: the pattern shows clearly on the back, slightly less crisp than on the front. You can see the rows of individual knots, and they are never perfectly even.
• Hand-tufted: the back is covered by a plain fabric or canvas, often glued on. You can't see the pattern or any knots.
• Machine-made: the pattern may show, but on a perfectly regular grid, with every stitch identical.

On most of our rug pages, one of the photos shows the back of the rug, so you can check the knots for yourself before you order.

2. Follow the fringe

On a hand-knotted rug, the fringe is the ends of the warp threads: the same threads that run through the whole rug and hold every knot. It is part of the rug, not an extra.

On many tufted and machine-made rugs, the fringe is a strip sewn or glued onto the ends afterwards. Look closely where the fringe meets the pile: if there is a seam or a band of fabric, the fringe was added.

3. Look for small irregularities

Hand-knotted rugs are not perfect, and that is a good sign. Look for:

• lines that wander slightly, and motifs that aren't exactly the same each time;
• small shifts in a color from one band to the next, where a new batch of wool was used;
• sides that aren't perfectly straight, and a size that is a little off the listed one.

A rug where every motif is identical and every edge is laser-straight was almost certainly made by machine.

4. Part the pile

Push the pile apart with your fingers and look at the base. On a hand-knotted rug you will see the knots wrapped around the warp threads. On a tufted rug you will see loops coming out of a canvas, and sometimes the glue.

5. Check the material and the price

A good seller tells you exactly what the rug is made of. Wool feels dry, springy and slightly matte. Synthetic fibers feel slippery, often have a sheen, and don't spring back the same way.

Then think about time. A hand-knotted rug in a living-room size takes weeks of work on the loom. If a large rug described as hand-knotted costs about the same as a sofa cushion, ask questions.

Questions to ask before you buy

• Is it hand-knotted, hand-tufted, flat-woven or machine-made?
• What is the pile made of? Is it 100% wool?
• Can I see a photo of the back?
• Is it new or vintage? Where was it made?