The workshop
Rug Gossips has woven 2,387 custom rugs. For most of that time, they were made on other people's looms. We'd send the spec, wait, and hope. Quality drifted between batches. Timelines slipped without warning. And when something came out wrong, we were apologising for work we had never watched being made.
So we stopped. There are now nineteen looms and forty weavers in Lahore, all ours — twelve looms for flatweave, five for hand-knotted, two for hand-loomed, and our own dyeing. Every rug you commission is made under one roof, by people we employ, and checked by us before it's wrapped.
A designer ordered an 8×10 for a client project. We wove it in two weeks, at our normal pace, and shipped it. When it arrived she realised the room had been measured wrong — it should have been a 9×12. Her install date hadn't moved.
So we set the warp the same day and put sixteen weavers on it, four at a time in six-hour shifts. Not because six hours is heroic, but because it isn't: weavers slow down as they tire, and four rested people weave faster than four tired ones. As each shift finished, four fresh weavers took over the loom.
The 9×12 was finished in three days.
This is not a service we offer, and we won't quote you three days. It's what became possible once the looms were ours. Through a subcontractor, that phone call ends with "sorry."
Measurements, colours, and whatever reference you have: a drawing, a photograph of the room, a fabric swatch, a picture of an antique you want to echo.
We dye and wind wool to your colours and post them to you. Nothing goes on a loom until you've held them.
Your design, drawn to scale, sent back for approval. Use it in your client presentation.
Send a photograph of the actual room and we place the design into it, to scale, so you and your client can see the rug in the space before a single knot is tied. Free, and as many revisions as the decision takes.
Progress photographs as it's woven, so you're never left waiting in silence.
Washed, finished, checked, wrapped. Door to door, DDP, 7–8 days.
We buy top-quality wool sourced from the regions that produce it best — chosen for staple length, spring underfoot, and how evenly it takes a hand dye. That last one matters more than anything else when a client has posted us a paint chip to match.
If your project calls for a luxury fibre, we have it. New Zealand wool, mohair, and silk are all available on request — as a full pile or as a highlight worked into a wool ground, which is often the better-looking and better-priced answer. Tell us what the specification asks for and we'll quote it.
Cotton for warps, jute where a flatweave wants more body. Colour is matched to a physical swatch you send us — a fabric sample, a paint chip, a photograph of something the rug has to sit beside. All dyeing is done in-house, by hand, in small lots.
Forty weavers, employed directly by us — not sourced through a contractor, not paid by the piece through a middleman.
We pay 15% above the local market rate for weaving. We don't use child labour, and we never have. Everyone at these looms is an adult doing skilled work they've spent years learning, for a business that knows their names.
We say this plainly because the handmade rug trade has a history that makes buyers cautious, and that caution is reasonable. If you want to ask us anything about how our workshop runs, ask. We'll answer.
Find us
Our own factory on Canal Road, near Lal Pul — nineteen looms, forty weavers, and the dye house out the back. Trade visitors are welcome; tell us when you're in Lahore and we'll show you the floor.
Our promise
Every colour here is dyed by hand, in small lots, by people rather than machines. That means a 5–10% variation between the sample and the finished rug — and that variation is the point. It's the difference between a rug that was made and a rug that was manufactured.
But variation isn't the same as wrong. If your rug doesn't match the samples you approved, we weave it again — at our cost, with no return shipping to arrange.
Applies against approved yarn samples, within 14 days of delivery, with photographs. Natural 5–10% dye variation isn't a fault. Doesn't cover a change of mind or a size measured incorrectly.
