Hand-knotted or hand-tufted: what each gesture gives a rug

A hand-knotted rug is built knot after knot: the artisan tightens each point by hand around warp threads stretched across a loom, and the design is born from the colour of those points. A hand-tufted rug is built otherwise. The artisan shoots wool through a stretched canvas with a needle gun guided by hand, then the reverse is glued and lined with a second canvas. Both are made by hand, piece by piece, and we publish both. What separates them can be seen on the reverse, felt beneath the palm and counted in months. The knotted rug is supple, it folds, it acquires a patina, and it asks for time: four to six months for a large format. The tufted rug is firmer, it travels rolled, it is made more quickly and welcomes bold flat colour, very free drawing, chiselled relief. At Diacasan, the knotted pieces come from Nepal and the tufted ones from India, two workshops with which we have worked for twenty-five years.

How is a hand-knotted rug made?

On a loom, point by point. The warp threads are stretched from one end of the future rug to the other; the artisan knots the wool onto them, row after row, changing colour each time the design calls for it. The pattern therefore runs through the whole thickness of the piece, and it reappears on the reverse, almost identically. The fringes are the ends of those very warp threads. They belong to the structure of the rug itself.

In Nepal, Himalayan wool is spun by hand before being wound into skeins and dyed. Once off the loom, the rug is washed, scraped, turned over, then stretched on a frame to its final shape. There are some fifteen stages in all, which we follow step by step in the journey of a knotted rug, from spun wool to finishing.

The larger the piece, the longer the time, since every point is knotted by hand. It is the technique of the Oriental rug, of Isfahan, Tabriz and Bukhara. It is also the one that gave the founder the desire to create Diacasan, even if it is no longer the largest part of our collections today. The pieces of NEPALESE RUGS, SUR LE FIL and SPATIAL are hand-knotted in Nepal. The page devoted to hand-knotting shows its gestures in pictures.

How is a hand-tufted rug made?

It begins with a canvas. The canvas is stretched on a frame and the design is transferred onto it; it plays the part the warp plays in weaving. The artisan sets the wool strand by strand, with a needle gun that he drives back and forth across the surface. Once the surface is covered, the reverse receives a layer of latex, then a second canvas that gives the whole its strength. The pile is then sheared to even it out, and hand carving can deepen the design to heighten its relief.

The process reached France later than one might imagine. The Encyclopædia Universalis dates the first hand-tufted rugs, arriving from Hong Kong, to 1974, and names the Cogolin manufactory as the first to adopt it in France. Artists seized upon it from the late seventies: Sonia Delaunay championed the process in 1977, and eighty-five artists' rugs were shown at the Salon des artistes décorateurs in 1985.

It still holds true today. In India, our head of production knows how to isolate the zones of a painting or a photograph so that they can be executed: it is in hand-tufting that we publish the canvases of Jean-Paul Espinosa in PAINTINGS, as well as the drawing by Christian Signorel rendered in relief in MINOTOR 2.0. Tufting does not go through the washing that completes a knotted rug. It emerges crisper, more contained, and keeps clean contours. Our page on hand-tufting details its stages.

How can they be told apart when laid side by side?

By turning back a corner. On the reverse of a knotted rug, the design reappears and the grid of knots can be made out; no lining covers it. On the reverse of a tufted rug, one finds a canvas, which hides the layer of glue. This simple gesture is most often enough.

The fringes confirm it. On a knotted rug, they are the warp threads extending beyond the pile. On a tufted rug, when it has any, they are added at the end of the making, sewn or glued along the edge.

The hand does the rest. A knotted rug folds like a heavy cloth and settles back into place; a large knotted piece in fact reaches us folded in a crate, and a little walking over it is enough for it to lie flat again. A tufted rug is stiffer. It does not fold, it rolls. To the touch, the knotted rug feels a little more rustic, more alive; the tufted one, more even. We describe these signs, and others, in recognising a handmade rug.

What does the technique change to colour?

Above all, it changes the wool that carries it. In Nepal, we knot a hand-spun Himalayan wool whose irregularity is intended: colour varies slightly within it and shifts with the angle of the gaze and the hour of the day. In India, tufting most often works a very pure New Zealand wool, sometimes blended with a local wool that the workshop knows how to measure. That purity is essential for pale tones and ecrus: a poorly scoured wool would leave shadows there that pass for stains. On a white or an ivory, the irregularity we love in a knotted rug would become a flaw. On a deep hand-knotted blue, it gives depth. This is one of the reasons why the same design does not carry the same bearing from one technique to the other.

Which to choose for a project?

The one that the calendar, the design and the place make right. Lead time often decides first. For a hotel lobby delivered on a fixed date, the four to six months of a large knotted piece are sometimes impossible to hold, and tufting becomes the natural answer. For a large room in a private residence, where one accepts the wait, knotting comes fully into its own.

The design then weighs on the price, but not in the same way in both techniques. In knotting, the artisan ties every point regardless: the complexity of the pattern has little bearing on cost. In tufting, it counts for more. An intricate pattern is therefore discussed with the workshop before the technique is chosen.

Logistics, finally. A knotted rug folds and takes up little room in a crate; a large-format tufted rug travels rolled, which makes transport heavier and costlier. For a distant site, the question deserves to be asked early.

Before deciding, the artistic director always returns to the original idea of the architect or the decorator: what the room must tell, the use of the place, the budget. That is why we speak of projects, and why our interior architecture projects begin with a conversation rather than a catalogue.

Is one better than the other?

No. The same standard applies to both: the quality of the wool, the weight of material per square metre, the treatment of the yarn. A tufted rug made with mediocre wool will disappoint, and so will a knotted one. Sandrine puts it simply: “there is not just one way to make a rug”. Knotting has on its side the long tempo of time and that way of growing more beautiful with use which makes us say a rug acquires a patina. Tufting has agility on its side, the crispness of line, the freedom left to artists. It is the craft of a rug publisher to choose, for each design, the gesture that will serve it best.

When the project allows time, we knot in Nepal. When it presses, or when the design calls for the freedom of the canvas, we tuft in India. The rest is decided by touching the samples.

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

Sources: Encyclopædia Universalis, la vogue du tapis tufté; Tufenkian, Hand-tufted vs hand-knotted rugs.