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Article: Oriental Rugs: A Primer
- Article from:
- The Washington Post
- Article date:
- February 25, 1988
- Author:
CopyrightThis material is published under license from the Washington Post. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Washington Post. (Hide copyright information)
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An Oriental rug is a kaleidoscope of history. Its rich and
colorful designs evoke Marco Polo and Omar Khayyam, the Silk Route
and the Crusades, the Ottoman Empire, pashas and palaces, caravans
and camels.
Any history of Oriental rugs invariably begins with the Pazyryk,
the oldest known complete example of a knotted rug. Thought to have
been created sometime between 500 and 200 B.C., this King Tut's Tomb
of carpets was discovered by a Soviet anthropologist in 1949 in the
Altai Mountains of central Asia near Mongolia.
Inside a chamber, preserved in the permafrost, was a
six-foot-square knotted rug with a central rectangle of 24 deep red
squares containing rosettes with a cruciform motif. ...