Rug
Knotted, woven, tufted and hooked floor coverings, from ancient pile carpets to Navajo weaving and modernist design.
13 works · 10 related artists
About
The oldest surviving knotted pile carpet, found frozen in a tomb at Pazyryk in Siberia, dates from about the 4th century BC. Hand-knotted rugs are made by tying short lengths of wool or silk around the warp threads and clipping them to form a pile, while flat-woven kilims have no pile at all. Weavers in Iran, Anatolia, the Caucasus and Central Asia each developed recognisable patterns, from medallions and vines to tribal guls, and Mughal workshops made carpets of extreme fineness.
Other traditions include Navajo weaving, which shifted from blankets to rugs in the late 19th century, and Scandinavian long-pile rya rugs. Modern designers treated the rug as a field for abstraction, and Edward Fields made carved, sculpted-pile rugs in mid-century America. Turn a rug over to see its knot density, and look for abrash, the subtle bands of colour that come from hand-dyed batches of yarn.
