In the cold months, warm woollen blankets are our favorite companions. In the home office, they keep us at operating temperature, and on the sofa they provide cozy comfort. Our selection of blankets is as colorful and varied as our preferences are diverse. From hard-wearing all-rounders made of new wool to incomparably soft, light and cuddly cashmere and alpaca blankets to particularly warm camel and yak hair for the really cold days. Which blanket will you take to your sofa?

The use of wool as a raw material presupposed a revolution in human living habits: around 10,000 years ago, the Neolithic Revolution took place in the region of the Fertile Crescent - in Mesopotamia. The former hunter-gatherers became sedentary and practiced agriculture and animal husbandry for the first time. And wool processing can be traced to Mesopotamia from around the 4th millennium B.C. Basically, wool comes from sheep - and yet wool is not all the same. The wool fibers of all sheep wool breeds are therefore classified according to uniform criteria such as fiber length and fineness, crimp and color. So-called pure new wool is obtained from shearing the live animal, and some breeds are also plucked or combed out. Lamb's wool comes from the very first shearing of the sheep and is the softest and finest virgin wool. The wool blankets at Manufactum are made from high quality shearling, lamb's wool or merino wool. Merino sheep provide an exceptionally soft, fine wool, the fineness of their fibers is from 23 to 28 microns. Likewise, among the other virgin wool blankets, you can find very soft examples, but also full of character, such as the Swiss army blanket. It is made of virgin wool of such voluminous and robust quality that the blanket can also replace the Oberbett once or be used as a picnic blanket. Our lambskin blanket is not a wool blanket, but it is particularly warm. It represents, so to speak, the precursor of the wool blankets, because here the "wool" is still found as it has grown: as a warming fur.

Wool in the broader sense can be obtained not only from sheep, but also from the hair of some animal breeds. Like sheep's wool, the fine natural hairs of these breeds have outstanding insulating and air-conditioning properties. The fine hair of alpacas, for example, is a hollow fiber with outstanding natural heat-balancing properties. It is very light, has a natural sheen and is extremely resistant despite its fineness. Alpaca hair is therefore one of the most valuable natural fibers. Cashmere, produced from the underfur of the cashmere goat, is the finest and noblest natural hair. Soft and warming, wool blankets made of cashmere are also surprisingly light. Yak hair is also ideal for making very light yet warming wool blankets. Although yak hair is lighter and softer than sheep's wool, it is also very strong. Wool blankets made of silky shiny camel hair are ideal for the really cold winter evenings and nights and are extremely durable despite all their softness.