The Rug Library

Prayer rugs are commonly about 3 × 5 feet and nearly always show a mihrab, a pointed arch at one end that the worshipper orients towards Mecca.

The Kevorkian Hyderabad Carpet, nearly 16 metres long, shows that some Deccan court carpets were made at palace-hall scale.

The Central Silk Board is a statutory body set up in 1948 under India's Ministry of Textiles, with mandates covering sericulture research, silkworm seed production and advising on the silk industry.

India has the distinction of producing all four commercially known silks: mulberry, tasar, eri and muga, the last three being grouped as 'vanya' (wild or forest) silks.

Mulberry silk comes from the silkworm Bombyx mori, which feeds solely on the leaves of the mulberry plant.

Muga, a naturally golden-yellow silk, is described by the Central Silk Board as the pride of Assam; it is obtained from the semi-domesticated silkworm Antheraea assamensis.

Eri silk, also called Endi or Errandi, is spun from open-ended cocoons of a domesticated silkworm that feeds mainly on castor leaves, which sets it apart from other silk varieties.

Tasar (tussah) silk is a coppery-coloured, relatively coarse silk that the Central Silk Board notes is mainly used for furnishings and interiors.

Muga silk has a glossy golden hue that is said to improve with age and washing; it is traditionally neither bleached nor dyed, and almost all of its production takes place in Assam.

Muga silkworms feed on the aromatic leaves of som and soalu trees and are reared outdoors on the trees, much as tasar silkworms are.

According to Wikipedia's account, muga silk was reserved for the exclusive use of Assam's royal families for around 600 years.

The name eri comes from the Assamese word 'era' for the castor plant, whose leaves feed the domesticated eri silkworm, Samia ricini.

Very fine rugs are sometimes woven on a silk foundation, but dealers note this is reserved for a small share of top-end pieces, with cotton far more common.

Because the eri cocoon is open at one end, the moth can emerge before the silk is processed, which is why eri is often marketed as 'ahimsa' or peace silk.

Researchers have explored degumming silk with enzymes such as papain, trypsin and bromelain, which can remove sericin while causing less damage to the fibroin than sodium carbonate treatment.

Crossbreeding has left only a small population of true-type Magra sheep, and the breed has been flagged as needing conservation.

Researchers have tested curcumin extracted from Curcuma aromatica rhizomes as a natural yellow colourant for dyeing silk.

Recent studies have explored dyeing textiles with turmeric extracts using natural, plant-derived mordants in place of metal salts.

Traditional soap or alkali degumming of silk can use heavy amounts of water and energy and damage the fibroin, prompting research into gentler, greener methods.

Wool scouring yields a useful by-product: the wool grease removed from fleece is refined into lanolin for cosmetics and ointments.

Tasar silk comes from wild silkworms of the genus Antheraea reared on forest trees, and it supports forest-based livelihoods for tribal communities in states such as Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Bihar.

The English word 'paradise' derives from an ancient Persian term, 'pairidaeza', meaning walled garden, which helps explain why garden carpets are often read as images of paradise.

The Met describes the Wagner Garden Carpet's design as drawing on both the pre-Islamic Persian idea of paradise and Qur'anic descriptions of the Garden of Heaven.

In Persian garden carpets, specific trees and flowers such as the cypress and rose may carry poetic or mystical meanings beyond the general idea of paradise, according to the Met.