Thibault Van Renne
Thibault Van Renne inspecting hand-dyed wool and silk yarns hanging in the dyeing shed — the material palette of the atelier

Materials

Materials

A Thibault Van Renne hand-knotted carpet is built almost entirely from natural fibres. This page is the material palette of the atelier — what each fibre is, where we source it from, and what each one does on the loom and under foot.

Wool — region by region

Wool is the foundation of a TVR carpet. The character of the wool changes with the region, and we keep it that way deliberately — each one brings something the others cannot.

Tibetan highland wool — used in our Nepalese pieces

  • Sourced in Tibet — long-staple mountain wool from high-altitude flocks
  • Hand-carded and hand-spun in Kathmandu, Nepal
  • Lustrous, takes dye with depth, and ages slowly

Bikaner wool — used in our finest Indian pieces

  • From local Rajasthani sheep in and around Bikaner — a region historically renowned for the quality of its wool
  • Hand-carded and hand-spun in Bikaner itself
  • The spun yarn then travels to Jaipur for the dyeing process
  • Used in our finest hand-knotted work, and in our highest knot counts (up to 225 kpsi — see Craftsmanship)

Kashmir wool

  • Regular sheep wool from the Kashmir region — not pashmina goat (a different fibre entirely)
  • Sturdy, durable, built to be walked on for decades

Afghan Ghazni wool

  • From Ghazni province in Afghanistan, woven in Afghanistan and finished in Pakistan
  • Famous for its heavy abrash — the dramatic natural shading of the same hue within a single piece
  • A more visibly hand-made surface than the more controlled wools, and that is the point

Silk

In most of our collections we use natural mulberry silk (Bombyx mori). When a particular design calls for a more rustic look, we mix it with wild silk — same silkworm origin, different species, more visible irregularity in the thread.

Sourcing:

  • Our Indian production uses silk from a small silk house in Bangalore
  • Our Nepalese production uses silk imported from China

Silk usually goes into the colour highlights of a piece — the difference in lustre between wool and silk is what catches the light and brings the design forward.

When we deviate from natural silk for a specific collection, we use bamboo silk — and we say so on that collection. Bamboo silk shines, but in practice it is about 10% bamboo and the rest synthetic chemistry; it is not real silk and we do not call it real silk.

Nettle — the Himalayan giant nettle

Our nettle comes from Allo, the Himalayan giant nettle (Girardinia diversifolia) — a plant that grows only in the Himalayas, at high altitude. It is also imported from Nepal to our Indian atelier for collections like our ETHNIC line.

How we prepare it:

  • The fibre is drawn from the inside of the stem
  • It is boiled in water with a specific tea that enhances the natural tone of the fibre
  • We purify the nettle to remove the darkest tones — the deep browns and blacks — to give a softer, more even palette
  • The result is a beautiful natural flow of colour and a natural abrash

Two facts to know about nettle:

  • It cannot be dyed. Its colour is always natural — which is why the preparation step matters as much as it does
  • It takes about 1.5× the time of wool to hand-spin a kilo. It is a rougher fibre, especially on the spinner's hands

We often blend nettle with wool. The wool brings sturdiness and softness; the nettle brings the natural shading that no dye can imitate. The first carpets we ever wove with nettle, in 2008, became our NATURE collection — see Innovation 2008.

Gold

Most of the gold-thread work in our GOLDEN LEGENDS collection is woven with Lurex — a metal foil wrapped around a cotton-thread core. We use a kelim flatweave technique for the Lurex sections, so the gold passes appear as shimmering flat panels within the hand-knotted body of the carpet.

We have also woven one piece using real 18-carat gold drawn as wire, knotted directly into the rug as a structural element. That commission was the world's first hand-knotted carpet using real gold fibre — see Innovation 2018 for the full story.

Gold is sourced from Rajasthan — historically a centre for both the highest-quality hand-knotted carpets and the Indian gold and jewellery trade.

Cotton

Cotton appears in our work in two specific places:

  • As the core thread inside the Lurex used for our GOLDEN LEGENDS gold work
  • As the backing of our tufted carpets for large hospitality and hotel projects (see the tufted scoping in Sustainability and Craftsmanship)

We do not use cotton as a primary fibre in our hand-knotted carpets.

Linen — for detail, never as the main material

We work with linen in some collections — but only in small areas, never as the main material. Linen reflects light differently from wool and silk, and we use it to create specific contrasts inside the design.

What we do not use in our hand-knotted line

  • Petroleum-based synthetic pile (polyester, nylon, acrylic)
  • Hemp — too rough on the hand, the colour leans yellowish-green, and it is very hard to clean. We tested it and chose against it.
  • Bamboo silk as a hidden material — when we use it (and only some collections do), we say so on that collection

Tufted line — a different palette

For our tufted carpets, made for large hospitality and hotel projects, the materials are different from our hand-knotted work — and we are open about it:

  • Primary fibre is usually New Zealand wool
  • On request, the primary fibre can be specified as TENCEL (particularly sturdy for high-traffic spaces) or viscose
  • Backing is cotton, fixed with the glue that every tufted carpet in the world uses

The tufted line is a separate product category. We do not claim it sits on the same sustainability or material standards as the hand-knotted work — see Sustainability for the full scoping.

See also

  • Craftsmanship → — knot densities, time on the loom, the in-house dye technique
  • Innovation → — nettle in 2008, real 18-carat gold fibre in 2018, year by year
  • Our Story → — the four regions and the family thread from 1974
  • Sustainability → — what we audit, what we repair, what we will not claim

This is the material palette of the atelier. Every TVR hand-knotted carpet is built from these, and only these — chosen for what each fibre actually does in the piece, on the loom, and under foot.

— Thibault Van Renne, Founder