World-Wide Trend Back To Wool

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 31985, 12 May 1969, Page 11

World-Wide Trend Back To Wool

Perhaps the most talked about carpet fibre at the 1968 Carpex in London (or to give it its fuD name, the International Carpet, Linoleum & Floorcoverings Fair, the world’s largest exhibition of floor coverings) was wool, the oldest earpet fibre. Wool fa still regarded by most carpet manufacturers in the U.K. as the standard by which other fibres are judged. Until this year it has cultivated the reputation of a luxury, high - priced, fibre. Wool has been regarded as the material of the top-class carpet weavers; the synthetic fibre the material of the tufted carpet manufacturers. Marked improvements in tufting quality standards and constructions, and the change-over of many traditional earpet weavers to tufted earpet operations, has more or less coincided with a fall in wool prices. At a time when the prices of synthetic fibres are steady, if not actually climbing, the long-known virtues of wool (lasting colour, durability, dirt resistance, flameproof safety, soft resilient comfort, and its beautiful look of luxury) are bringing it back to the forefront in earpet manufacture in Britain. Wool, too, fa a favourite with Scandinavian earpet manufacturers. According to a recent announcement by International Wool Secretariat, Woolmark tufted carpets are well established in Denmark, Austria, Sweden, West Germany and Norway.