Woven in fact on two distinctly different types of looms "the Spool Axminster loom and the Gripper Axminster loom", both of which were developed from the original jacquard loom technology of the nineteenth century. Generally, the Gripper - Axminster loom is viewed as better suited to contract carpet production, and many of these looms now operate electronically. During this process, the yarn is cut to a pre-determined length (according to the selected pile height) and woven simultaneously on the same loom with a jute or synthetic backing. Designs are created by the use of different yarn colours in specific places during the weaving process. The looms on which the axminster carpets are woven have and are still changing considerably over the lats years but the construction principal of interlocking the pile yarns with backing yarns is little changed.

Axminster carpets are installed in thousands of hotels, casinos, cruise ships, official or institutional buildings and beautiful homes throughout the world. Axminster weaving is still widely used for the production of wool rugs, carpet squares broadloom residential and contract carpets in multicoloured designs.
Design possibilities are limitless combining today's axminster looms with latest C.A.D. software.

Spool-gripper axminster looms are still used by numerous axminster carpet manufacturers worldwide, mainly for producing rugs and traditionnal pub carpets as residential "english carpets" i.e. more heavily patterned,
this specific manufacturing process allowing to weave axminster carpets with a virtually unlimited number of colors and bearing in mind that there is some limit regarding the size of pattern repeats. However if spool grippers looms are (so far...) seen as more productive, they remain in most cases more suitable for longer production runs.

Gripper-Jacquard axminster looms are the most versatile and by there are the ones the most suitable for contract carpeting.
With the introduction already some years ago of the electronic jacquard option and with today's E.J.axminster looms available from various manufacturers this versatility is increasing every year. Operating with 8 then 11 to 12 colours electronic axminster looms are now offered with 16 colours option for the latest ones...

The weaving speed is also changing and some of the latest looms are also called high speed axminster looms or E.J. High speed axminster looms.