Carpet

Carpet

[December, 2011] Soon after we arrived in Portugal, I noticed their carpets with a curious way of weaving.

We found that a small town in Alentejo, about 20km north of Evora called Arraiolos is the main producer.

So we took a taxi to get there ( in Portugal the taxi fare is fairly cheap).

In this town, tens of carpet shops are there.

I learned that here they do not weave carpet, but embroider them.

Probably it depends on the design, they said it takes 20 days to make 1 square metre.

It seems a lot of tourist groups come here.

At least one woman who embroider in every shop can speak English.

In one shop where they hang a big attractive carpet on the main wall, they said that in 3 days, two Americans and one Austrian asked them to make the same patterned carpet.

Of course we ordered one, too.