Oriental Carpets: A Complete Guide

Oriental Carpets is a completely updated and revised edition of what is widely recognized as the best comprehensive guide to carpets for both the expert and the beginner in carpet studies. This comprehensive handbook on Oriental carpets reviews the history of the art of weaving and explains basic carpet-making materials, tools and techniques.

Many line illustrations are included that portray the various kinds of knotting techniques and basic design motifs that are found in these high-quality carpets — carpets that, in former centuries, were made for the great oriental courts. Detailed captions for the 330 new high-quality color illustrations of carpets offer an invaluable body of technical information.

Special new features for this edition include completely updated text, much of which the authors researched with recent field study; coverage not only of Turkey, Persia, the Caucasus and Turkestan, as in previous editions of the book, but of new areas of study — China, India, Tibet, Mongolia, North Africa and the Balkans, making the book now truly comprehensive; all of which combine to create an essential general reference work on the subject.

This comprehensive, authoritative volume by the most regarded names in the field reviews the history of the art of weaving & explains basic carpet-making materials, tools & techniques.

This comprehensive volume by the most regarded names in the field reviews the history of the art of weaving and explains basic carpet-making materials, tools, and techniques. The line illustrations portray the various kinds of knotting techniques and basic design motifs that are found in high-quality carpets. Detailed captions for the 330 new color illustrations offer an invaluable body of technical information.

Murray L. Eiland Jr has traveled extensively conducting field research and collecting rugs for study in the Middle and Far East. He is the author of Chinese and Exotic Rugs.

His son, Murray Eiland III, recently finished his doctorate in Near Eastern archaeology at Oxford. Both authors have conducted field research in the Middle East during 1996 and 1997 in preparation for this book.