Craftsmanship
Craftsmanship
If our production page shows the steps, this page is about the standards behind them — the numbers, the materials, the dye technique, and the few things we will not do.
This page covers our hand-knotted carpets — the heart of the atelier. For large hospitality and hotel projects, where scale and budget call for it, we also produce tufted carpets as a separate product line; that work follows its own process and is not what is described below.
Knot density — the number behind every carpet
Knot density is measured in knots per square inch (kpsi). It is the single best predictor of how long a carpet will take to weave, and how fine the design can be.
Our range:
- 81 kpsi and 121 kpsi — our standard densities, used for most commissions
- 196 kpsi — special orders where the design calls for finer detail or a denser, heavier weave
- Up to 225 kpsi — ultra-luxury, time-consuming commissions; the upper limit of what we produce
Higher is not automatically better. A 121-kpsi carpet has a softer, more inviting pile; a 225-kpsi piece carries finer detail and a denser hand but takes more than twice the time. The right number depends on the design and how the carpet will live in the room.
Time on the loom
A normal-size TVR carpet is woven by several knotters working side by side, following a chart where every square is a single knot. Two numbers matter:
| Knot density | On the loom (knotting only) | Full lifecycle (brief → ready) |
|---|---|---|
| Up to 121 kpsi | 4 to 5 months | 5 to 6 months |
| 196 kpsi | ~9 months | ~10 months |
| 225 kpsi | ~11+ months | At least a full year |
The lifecycle figure adds design, cartoon, dye preparation, washing, drying, shaving, stretching, and hand-carving on top of the knotting — roughly one extra month.
Hand-carded, hand-spun wool
Every wool fibre we use is hand-carded (cleaned and aligned) and hand-spun into yarn. The natural irregularity in the thickness of a hand-spun thread is what produces the subtle abrash — slight variations of the same hue within a single piece — once the yarn is dyed.
Machine-spun yarn cannot replicate this. Uniform thickness in equals uniform colour out. We use machine-spun thread for nothing.
Dyes — Swiss chemical, with the natural abrash look
We use Swiss chemical dyes, not natural dyes. Two reasons:
- Repeatability. When a client commissions a second piece in the same colour — months or years after the first — the colour has to match. Natural dyes drift; chemical dyes are reproducible to within a tighter tolerance.
- Lightfastness. Natural dyes fade faster under sun. Swiss chemical dyes bind exceptionally well to the fibre and hold their colour for decades.
The natural abrash look that defines our carpets — the soft shading inside a single hue — comes not from the dyes being natural, but from the combination of hand-carded, hand-spun yarn and an in-house dyeing technique we developed for our atelier. When the dye bath touches a hand-spun thread, it absorbs less where the thread is tightly spun and more where it is loose. The colour breathes inside itself.
So the visual richness of natural dyes, with the colour-match and fade-resistance of modern ones. You get the upside of both, the downside of neither.
The one exception is our nettle fibre from Nepal: it is undyed, and the colour is the colour the plant gives. See Innovation 2008 for the story.
Traceability — every carpet, every time
Since 2014, every TVR carpet leaves the atelier with a holographic authenticity label sewn into it — with a hidden message that distinguishes an original TVR from any imitation. The label is unique to its carpet, and unforgeable. See Innovation 2014 for the story.
For our 18-carat gold-fibre carpets (2018 onward), the gold is part of the knot structure, not a coating laid on top — verifiable by the structure itself.
Bespoke is the default
Since 2009, every TVR hand-knotted carpet is built to order — your size, your colour, your design, your pile height. See Innovation 2009 for when and why we made bespoke the standard.
The few stock pieces we keep in the atelier are made for one purpose: to show designers and clients how a colour or a design lives in real wool and silk, in a real piece. At the end of each collection's lifecycle, those reference pieces are sold.
What we will not do
These are not negotiations:
- No synthetic fibres. Wool, silk, nettle — that is the list.
- No factory finishing. Washing, drying, shaving, stretching, hand-carving — all by hand, in the regions where the carpet was woven.
- No mill-spun yarn. Hand-carded and hand-spun only; the abrash depends on it.
- No anonymous weaving. We are members of Care & Fair; conditions are visited and verified.
The hands behind every piece
On any given day, around 500 weavers are at work on TVR commissions, spread across our four regions — Nepal, India (Rajasthan), Kashmir, and the Pakistan-Afghanistan corridor. During busy commission periods that number expands: we bring in additional weaver families — many of them with several generations of knotting behind them — to keep our delivery times honest without cutting corners.
We do not run our own factory. We work with master weavers and the families they bring with them.
See Our Story for which region does what, and why.
See also
- Our Story → — the four regions and the family thread from 1974
- Innovation timeline → — the year-by-year list of firsts
- Inside our production → — the ten crafts, with video at each step
- Awards & recognition → — international design awards
These standards are not marketing copy. They are the reason a TVR carpet still takes the same number of months it took half a century ago — and the reason it will still be on the floor in fifty years.
— Thibault Van Renne, Founder