Himalayan wool, New Zealand wool: to each its rug

Why work with several wools when the word wool seems to say it all? Because they do not carry colour in the same way. Himalayan wool, which we have knotted in Nepal, is spun by hand and keeps a natural irregularity: its colour varies slightly from one thread to another, changes with the angle of the gaze and the hour of the day, and acquires a patina over the years. New Zealand wool, which we use for hand-tufting in India, is of great purity and an even whiteness: it is the one that allows clean pale tones, ecrus without shadows, frank colours laid in flat fields. One serves the depth and the long tempo of knotting. The other serves the crispness and clarity of tufting. For a wool living-room rug, the choice is therefore made first on the colour one wishes to live with: vibrant and changing, or pale and even. The rest follows from it, the technique, the workshop, the lead time.

Himalayan wool, a sought-after irregularity

It comes from the heights, and it is spun by hand. It is with this wool that everything began: the founder created Diacasan for Nepalese knotting, even before tufting became the largest part of our collections. According to Wikipedia, the Tibetan rug originally used changpel, the fleece of highland sheep; the workshops later created in Nepal favoured long-fibred wools rich in lanolin.

Hand-spinning does not seek regularity. From one thread to another, the thickness changes a little, and with it the way the dye takes and the light returns. Across a flat field, the colour moves as one walks around the rug, and changes with the hour. It is this living surface that the pieces of NEPALESE RUGS carry, knotted in Nepal in Himalayan wool, a collection in which craftsmanship serves as the motif.

The same wool is sometimes blended with other fibres. In SUR LE FIL, the drawings of Renaud Allirand are knotted in Himalayan wool, hemp and silk. In SPATIAL, the mineral compositions of Emmanuel Thibault, turned towards texture rather than the figure, are knotted in Himalayan wool or viscose.

New Zealand wool, the purity of pale tones

It is white, and that is its whole interest. Te Ara, the encyclopedia of New Zealand, recalls that New Zealand wool is white and can therefore be dyed in a multitude of colours, and that about half the country's production is a strong wool, classed as ideal for carpet. A wool from poorly selected sheep or difficult conditions, by contrast, drifts towards yellow, and can only be dyed in dark colours.

This purity matters particularly for pale colourways. A poorly scoured wool leaves, on an ecru or an ivory, shadows that look like stains. In tufting, we do not want them. In India, the workshop therefore blends New Zealand wool, the reference, with a local wool. Knowing how to measure this blend is the workshop's craft.

The collections that live on clarity are made of it. The rugs of GRAND NORD, signed Messieurs, are tufted in New Zealand wool, a generous, tousled wool that answers arctic blue with a frank white. In VUE DU CIEL, Sophie Tolachides runs sinuous lines across a New Zealand wool combined with Tencel, hand-tufted in India.

The most chromatic pieces of the house also pass through India. The rugs of PAINTINGS, in which Jean-Paul Espinosa makes the colour of his canvases vibrate, are hand-tufted there: the workshop knows how to isolate each zone of a painting and give it its wool, its shade, its place. A frank colour, laid without shadow, requires a fibre that does not cloud it.

Why not swap the two?

Because each wool would lose what it brings. A New Zealand wool in a Nepalese knot would yield a smoother rug, one that would lose its soul. Sandrine is categorical on this point: “In Nepal, we do not want New Zealand. I do not want that kind of purity.”

Conversely, the irregularity we love in Nepal would become a flaw in a pale tufted rug: on an ivory ground, a variation in the yarn would read as soiling. Each wool therefore has its place, and the house keeps to it.

And the wools of Europe?

They have their place, under watch. In Italy and France, our workshops make tufted pieces, furniture and soft furnishings. European wools there are of fine quality, but the purity of whites and ecrus requires constant vigilance. For certain pieces, it is also possible to request a New Zealand wool there.

Other wools, finally, have been the subject of research in their own right. The house has worked on a collection of plain rugs entirely devoted to the wool of Rajasthan, with no motif to cover it: colour holds alone there, from one edge to the other. It is another way of letting a wool speak, by leaving it the whole surface.

Does wool do everything?

No, but nothing is done without it. The artistic director says it plainly: a rug is not beautiful because it is knotted or tufted. There is first the drawing, then what one puts into it. The quality of the wool, its treatment, the weight of material per square metre: with the same drawing and the same technique, two rugs can carry a very different bearing depending on these choices.

That is why wool is chosen early, at the same time as the technique. A graphic drawing with crisp contours, in pale colours, will call for a pure wool and tufting. A deep flat field, which one wants to see change through the day, will call for a hand-spun wool and knotting. Between the two, there is the conversation with the workshop, and the samples laid side by side before deciding.

At the Paris showroom, we keep these samples close at hand. The simplest course is to touch them: between a hand-spun wool and a very pure wool, the difference is felt under the palm before it is seen.

How to choose the wool for a living-room rug?

Starting from colour, then from the life of the room. If you are looking for a deep blue, an earth tone, a green that changes through the day, hand-knotted Himalayan wool will give you that vibration, and a patina over the years. If you are looking for a clean ecru, a frank white, a drawing with precise contours in pale colours, hand-tufted New Zealand wool will hold those tones better.

Lead time and size come next. A large knotted rug requires four to six months; a tufted rug is made more quickly. Whatever the wool, our records recommend vacuuming gently, in the direction of the pile, and avoiding prolonged exposure to the sun. We detail this choice in hand-knotted or hand-tufted.

Be wary, finally, of wools that are too beautiful on the first day. The publisher remembers a time when certain rugs from Turkey were made of what the trade calls dead wools: superb at purchase, grey a year later. “Wool is a natural fibre, it is alive,” she recalls. A wool taken from a dead animal loses that life, and the colour dies out. It is one of the reasons why we go to see the material in the workshops, and it is what allows our knotted rugs to age as we recount in a rug acquires a patina.

Himalayan wool, hand-spun, knotted in Nepal. New Zealand wool, hand-tufted in India.

Text written by the house of Diacasan Edition from conversations with Sandrine Demas on material and workshops, and from our exchanges with our workshops in Nepal and India, October 2026.

Sources: Wikipedia, Tibetan rug; Te Ara, Encyclopedia of New Zealand, Using New Zealand wool, carpets.