The oldest fragment of a knotted rug, dates to 5th century BC, and was found in the frozen tomb of a nomadic chieftan at Pazyrk in the Altai Mountains. As this fragment is fairly sophisticated in appearance it is believed that the art of the knotted pile rug began even earlier, then developed to a high structural and artistic level amidst the pastoral nomads in the steppes of Central Asia.

The knotted rug then reached the Middle East in the 8th or 9th centuries with the migrating nomadic Turkish tribes.
Very little is then known about the history of rugs until the 12th, 13th and 14th centuries when examples from the Turkish Selcuk Period were found in various Turkish mosques.

Depicted in European paintings in the 16th C. beautiful oriental rugs were often used from then until modern times, to indicate the high economic and social status of the owner.



The modern history of rugs really began in the 19th C, when large cottage industry and workshop productions flourished in Iran, Azerbaijan and Central Asia to meet the ever increasing demand for handmade carpets on the international markets.

Gradually with modernisation and the changes in their ancient or nomadic lifestlyes, many weavers lost their hereditary skills, leaving some tribes and villages with no modern weaving traditions or ones that have been significantly altered to cater to more commercial requirements.

However with the help of modern technology, the excellent research into natural dyes from projects like DOBAG in western Turkey, and an increased awareness of the need to keep this art form ' alive ', the rug weavers skill, once nearly lost to modernisation, has been significantly revived.

Now many village and city weavers incorporate their knowledge of ancestral motifs and beautiful natural dyes into the rugs they produce for sale today.The continued use of these ancient skills, means that new rugs can be of the highest possible quality,and also recapture the beauty and subtlety of many older woven treasures.