The Rug Library

Striped dhurries are among the most common in India, including the multicoloured jamkalams of Bhavani in Tamil Nadu and the blue-and-white nili chitti of Uttar Pradesh.

Scholarship on Deccan carpets is still being built; a Met volume on Deccan court arts includes an essay on creating a corpus of Deccani carpets and identifies previously unattributed pieces.

Before Akbar (r. 1556–1605), few carpets appear to have been made in India; his court historians record royal carpet workshops in Fatehpur Sikri, Lahore and Agra.

By the 17th century, Indian weavers were replacing Persian-style motifs with specifically Indian plants, flowers, animals and human figures, according to the Met.

Ottoman court carpets used designs shared with court ceramics, bookbindings and textiles, including the 'saz style' of long sinuous leaves and stylised flowers.

The Kevorkian Hyderabad Carpet, nearly 16 metres long, may have been made for the palaces of the Deccan sultans who ruled Hyderabad in the 17th century; it is now in the Museum of Islamic Art, Doha.

Deccan carpets of the 17th century often feature a vivid red ground, and their borders can echo the manuscript illumination of the period, with repeated arabesque cartouches.

From the 14th to the 17th century, the Deccan's Muslim courts produced arts that blended elements from Iran, West Asia, sometimes Europe, and both southern and northern India, including carpets and textiles.

Warangal in Telangana is known for flat-woven durries with geometric, angular motifs, traditionally in reds and blues, and received a Geographical Indication tag in 2018.

MAP Academy notes that Mughal carpets, though inspired by Persian models, stood apart through brighter colours, mainly red with touches of orange, yellow and green, and very fine knotting.

A V&A carpet woven in Lahore Jail around 1880, with palmettes and leaves on a black ground, was bought from the Punjab Exhibition of 1881–82.

Salawas near Jodhpur traces its dhurrie-weaving tradition to the mid-19th century, during the reign of Sawai Ram Singh II of Jaipur.

Fine Mughal carpets often have warps in bands of contrasting colours and wool pile so fine it is sometimes mistaken for silk.

At the Delhi Exhibition of 1902, jail carpets had their own section, and Yerwada Central Prison in Pune won a silver medal for its cotton dhurries.

Not every carpet from Rajasthan's jails followed Mughal-Persian knotted styles; some were cotton dhurries, a floor covering native to the region.

After Sawai Ram Singh II revived prison weaving in 1856, dhurrie workshops opened in jails in Agra, Bikaner, Baroda, Hyderabad, Jodhpur, Lucknow and elsewhere.