Pashmina Wool Shag Rug

Pashmina is a word that has been used a lot in the western world to describe scarves and shawls and carpets. The oddest and most confusing term is the pashmina shag rugs that are being advertised as if they were wool shag area rugs from the ultra fine and delicate wool sheared from the Himalayan Pashmina goat.

However, it very, very rare to find a genuine Pashmina rug, and certainly a shag rug will be even more difficult unless it is an actual goat hide. This very delicate and soft goat wool is mostly used in clothing and fine scarves.

So what is a shag rug that claims to use this fine goat hair? It’s usually just a term used to describe anything that is soft, and shag rugs are soft and silky like the wool after which they are named, but are not actually made of it.

Many rug companies are selling a blend of New Zealand wool and viscose, others are using pure cotton, and others even use synthetic fibers that have been treated to be very soft. Some of these shag area rug collections that say Pashmina are lovely soft shag rugs, no doubt about it, but they are not real goat hair.

That is something that always makes me laugh. When I see labels or read area rug descriptions of authentic Persian and Turkish area rugs and see that they claim to be made from New Zealand wool or Merino or Manchester wool. It just doesn’t seem possible, or logical.

But in fact it is…Australian and New Zealand wool is sent all over the world to weavers in remote areas and then returned to the west to be sold. However Manchester wool is not so much about the New Zealand or Australian Merino sheep that produce it, but about where the wool was once processed, and that was in Manchester.

Australian Merino Sheep’s wool was sent from Australia to Manchester for processing, then forwarded to rug makers in Afghanistan and Iran and other Persian and Oriental rug and carpet making centers, then shipped to carpet dealers and area rug sellers around the world. And all this was done because the best and longest strands of wool came from the Australian Merino sheep, while Manchester wool dealers knew how to comb and process it and the Iranians knew best how to weave it…. If you see a Kashan carpet label that says Merino New Zealand or Australian worsted Manchester wool hand knotted in Persia (Iran) this is not just a fancy marketing ploy, it’s really a very high quality carpet or area rug that merits buying for your home.