The Rug Library

The Met's 1997–98 exhibition 'Flowers Underfoot' surveyed Mughal-era carpets and treated the 'classical' period of Indian carpet weaving as ending around 1800.

Some later millefleur carpets kept a hallmark of 17th-century Mughal court pashmina rugs: silk warps in different colours arranged in stripes.

In the early 17th century, Mughal design moved from idealised Persian flowers towards naturalistic ones, possibly influenced by European botanical books and prints brought to the Mughal court.

Some early Mughal pictorial carpets were designed like a repeating textile, with each unit of trees, birds and animals turned in the opposite direction from the one before.

Distinctly Indian Mughal carpet designs included landscape carpets, animal carpets with lively chases, architectural lattices with flowers, and prayer rugs centred on one flowering plant.

Under the Ottoman, Safavid and Mughal dynasties, carpet weaving grew from a craft of inherited patterns into a state industry using designs created in court workshops.

Oriental carpet design traditionally emphasises a flat surface pattern, while European carpet designs lean towards painterly effects such as shading, pictorial scenes and architectural motifs.

During Iran's Qajar period, small repeating patterns such as the herati, minakhani and offset boteh became standard parts of the carpet design repertoire, with regional variations.

In the Mughal period the boteh merged with images of flowering plants, becoming the tapered, curved flowering bush now seen in Kashmiri shawl borders.

From the 1850s, Maharaja Sawai Ram Singh II introduced carpet weaving at Jaipur Central Jail; early designs were copied from his royal collection and later from Persian and Turkish carpets.

Many 19th-century Indian jail carpets used designs chosen by British overseers, reflecting a taste for classical 16th- and 17th-century Persian and Mughal patterns.

Millefleur design is linked to Eastern decorative influence and a trend in later Mughal ornament towards smaller, more intricate elements.

Some later millefleur carpets show declining materials, with cotton wefts and lower knot density, while still recalling the luxury court carpets they descend from.

An East India Company officer, William Fremlin, ordered a Mughal animal carpet bearing his coat of arms, probably woven in Lahore in the 1640s and now at the V&A.