Agra Rugs & Carpets take their name from the city of Agra in India (home of the Taj Mahal). Not coincidentally, Agra is the city settled by Mogul ruler Akbar The Great ( 1556-1606 AD ) - credited with bringing a great deal of art ( including rug weaving ) to the subcontinent. The Agra rugs below are part of a range of antique designs revived several years ago to meet growing interest in natural dye,
handspun-wool rugs with expansive, curvilinear patterns...more. To obtain more information ( and to view a larger, higher quality image ) for a particular rug, please click its image.
Agra has been a major center of carpet production since the great period of Mughal art in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. When the carpet industry was revived there under British rule in the nineteenth century, the great Mughal tradition got a new lease on life, accompanied by a new interest in the sorts of classicaly derived designs current in Persian rug production during the same period. Because of this, nineteenth and early twentieth century Agra carpets enjoyed a varied and ecclectic background that could draw on all the great achievements of Oriental carpet weaving. Agra rugs present elegant allover designs alongside medallion or centralized patterns. They have the rich pungent palette of classical Indian and Persian carpets as well as soft, cool earthy tones.
Located in the Uttar Pradesh state in northern India, Agra is most widely recognized for the Taj Mahal, the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan’s mausoleum for his third wife. Less widely known is that it has also been a large center for rug weaving since the 16th century. When Agra first became the Mughal capital in 1566, it too did it establish its presence as a rug weaving center. The Indians themselves had never had much need for large carpets and the craft was introduced relatively late. During the 17th century, a number of skillful Persians were called in to impart their weaving knowledge in India.
