Flip the rug upside down. On authentic, handmade Oriental rugs you should see foundation threads (usually blue, white or red, but could be different colors). These foundation threads are usually referred to as weft threads and in handmade Oriental rugs they go horizontally with the rug fringes. It is common to find partial weft threads running horizontally along the rugs underside for only a few centimeters, and then disappear because of wool knots. Handmade Oriental rugs do not have perfectly straight horizontal weft threads because they are handmade and not machine made. Furthermore, on the back of the rug look at the colored knots for unevenness where a number of areas will appear a little thicker, this indicating that the rug is handmade and not machine made as well. However, nowadays there are many machine-made rug imitations which do a great job at imitating hand-made rugs, so just because a rug is not perfectly even doesn’t mean that it is hand-made. See the photo below on for a visual of a handmade rug and a machine-made imitation. Subscribe to our newsletters for more info.