History of Area Rugs

Area Rugs have a recorded history which is more than 25 centuries old. The earliest extant sample is the Pazyryk rug discovered in a Siberian burial site in 1949. Another well-known ancient rug is the legendary “Spring of Khosrau,” made about 550 BC and once belonging to the King of Persia, or modern-day Iran. Basically, in the ancient days, area rugs were an exclusive forte of the Orient and the history of area rugs was a history of the Orient.

The crusades brought area rugs into Europe in the early 11th century. In Moorish Spain, the earliest area rugs of Europe were manufactured. The art spread to France and England, and then to the New World, America, where a new chapter in the history of area rugs began to be written.

The earliest US made area rugs were manufactured in 1791 in Philadelphia. The famous Karastan rugs were manufactured in the 1920's in Chicago, using a traditional Axminster loom modified to create a machine-made rug that looked exactly like a quality hand-made Oriental wool rug. Reverse engineering, it appears, did not begin in Asia!

Today, a number of area rug manufacturers have set up shop in the US. Many of these are owned by people of middle-eastern or Persian origin. Earlier, they imported hand-made, costly rugs from Persia or India. But now area rugs are manufactured in the US itself, with quality that is at par with any traditional hand-made area rug.

Buying area rugs, too, have become simpler these days. Only a few years back, you could buy a good area rug only if you lived in the city. Then too, you had to go down to the store to buy the area rug. Now, you can sit anywhere in the country and order an area rug online. In just a few years of technological development, your buying options have multiplied a hundredfold.