Rug

A flatwoven (pileless), tapestry-weave cotton rug. Dhurries are weft-faced and woven with a panja, a hand-held tool with metal prongs for beating the weft threads down to pack them more densely and cover the warp fully. The imagery of pictorial dhurries often references Central Asian and Mughal carpet traditions. This rug shows a connection to the hunting carpets of Akbar’s reign (1556-1605 AD) and to the medallion animal rugs and floral compartment rugs of Iran (Persia). The elephants and horses are drawn from courtly scenes of staged combat and processions. The narrow borders with diagonal stripes, geometric dentil scroll, rosettes, and stylized tulips on stems in the outer border—which have been even further stylized here so as to look completely geometric rather than floral—are in the style of Turkish prayer rugs from the 17th and 18th centuries. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, dhurries were mostly produced through penal labor in jails. This new mode of production was largely to service the growing colonial interest in Indian craft production from the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London.