Carpet With Scrolling Vines and Blossoms

The finest Indian carpets were made with a pile of pashmina wool and a foundation of silk, which allowed for hundreds of knots to be tied per square inch. Increasing the suppleness and softness of the carpet, the greater number of knots also increased the subtlety of the patterns that could be made on the carpet; here, a scrolling vine from which bloom palmettes, poppies, irises and serrated lancet leaves. Pashmina wool, the undercoat of the Himalayan mountain goat, was obtained from Kashmir (in northern India) and from western Tibet, from which imports were strictly regulated.