Features of Greek rugs

Greek rugs are of two kinds — the heavy ones which serve for floor coverings in the winter, and the thinner, which are used all the year round. Both are made of home-produced wool, often with hemp woof, and are worked by women and girls only, in wooden looms of a primitive order.

Athens is the only place in Greece where rugs are produced in a factory. Under the patronage of Her Majesty the Queen, an Association for the Education of Poor Women exists. This philanthropic association has founded an industrial institution which employs four hundred women and girls in its various departments, of whom about thirty are engaged in rug-weaving. The best rugs are those purely Grecian in design and qual­ity, and for these special orders are generally sent in. The rugs thus woven are durable and effective. Some­times an attempt is made to imitate Turkish rugs, but without their superb effect. Coarse rugs of an inferior class are sold in the bazaars of Athens. The predomi­nant color in these is a dingy white, with stripes of various colors at the ends. The rug is really durable, though the noticeable, fuzzy nap soon wears off.