The Rug Library

Cotton is a seed-hair fibre: each fibre is a single cell that grows from the seed coat inside the boll and, once dry, collapses into a flattened, twisted ribbon.

The earliest known cotton fibres are mineralised threads found inside copper beads in a grave at Mehrgarh (in present-day Pakistan), dated to around the 6th millennium BCE.

Cotton textile fragments and spindle whorls from the 3rd millennium BCE have been found at Mohenjo-daro and other Indus Valley sites, a likely early centre of tree-cotton cultivation.

Britannica describes raw cotton fibre as about 87–90% cellulose, 5–8% water and 4–6% natural impurities.

Four cotton species have been domesticated: Gossypium hirsutum and G. barbadense from the Americas, and the Old World species G. arboreum (tree cotton) and G. herbaceum (Levant cotton).

Gossypium arboreum, or tree cotton, is native to India and Sri Lanka and is still grown in India as 'desi' cotton.

A variety of cotton known as phuti karpas was used to make the famously fine Dhaka muslin of Bengal.

India has the world's largest area under cotton cultivation, roughly a third or more of the global total according to the Ministry of Textiles, though its yields per hectare are comparatively low.

In knotted-pile rugs, cotton's strength and smooth yarn make it a good warp; Britannica notes that in the East it is used for the whole foundation or for the warp alone.

Village and tribal rugs often use wool for the warp and weft as well as the pile, whereas city-workshop rugs more commonly have a cotton foundation.

Antique rug foundations were more often wool, whereas cotton warps and wefts became the most common foundation in 20th-century production.

Cotton seeds found among charred wheat and barley grains at Mehrgarh suggest cotton was grown there as a crop around 7,000 years ago.

India is the world's second-largest cotton producer and its largest consumer; the Ministry of Textiles estimated 2023–24 production at about 323 lakh bales, roughly a quarter of world output.

Old World cottons such as tree cotton were widely used before the 1900s but now make up only a small share (under about 2%) of global cotton production.

India introduced its first brand and logo for Indian cotton on the second World Cotton Day, according to the Press Information Bureau.