The tufted carpets industry has a very interesting history. A Georgia woman named Catherine Evans Whitener began the tufting process in the 1890s. So many people liked her work that it rapidly gained popularity. By the year 1920, there were manufacturers in the Carolina’s, Georgia and Tennessee that took it from a handcraft to a machine based craft. Singer, in the 1930s, developed a sewing machine that was capable of mass producing tufted robes, bedspreads, throw rugs and toilet seat covers. This development helped the tufted-textile industry to grow into one that generated millions of dollars by the 1940s.

The popularity of the tufted carpet grew so quickly that manufacturers and machine developers quickly found it necessary to adapt the tufting machines used for making bedspreads to have the ability to mass produce rugs that were room sized and to make wall-to-wall carpeting. Mohawk, out of New York, largely dominated the high-priced carpet industry until the 1950s, using power looms and expensive natural wool fibers.

During the 1950s, companies like E.T. Barwick Mills and Cabin Crafts, based in Georgia, started using their tufting machines and large pieces of backing material to create a new era of less expensive carpeting. Instead of the expensive wool fibers, these manufacturers were using the less costly fiber of cotton. This enabled them to produce carpets and rugs that resembled the expensive woven products. Efficiency was the greatest benefit to the new tufting process and enabled manufacturers to sell new carpets and rugs for half the price of the woven wool rugs.

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