Textiles

The two magnificent carpets on display in the Oval Room beginning July 25 were among the fewer than five hundred that survive from the court of the Mughal emperors. Woven in northern India in the mid-seventeenth century, these carpets were luxurious objects in terms of both the fabrics used to make them (silk and cashmere) and the artistically complex patterns that they display. The Frick carpets date from the reign of Shah Jahan (1628–1658) and were probably made at the royal factory in Lahore, one of India’s main cities for carpet production.