UNDER THE CARPET _
Making and Knowledge
We are an interdisciplinary group of researchers with a shared interest in carpets and their makers. Our aim is to encourage and explore cross-disciplinary and critical perspectives on carpets.
We offer a platform where academics, creative practitioners and those interested in carpets can enrich their understanding. Whilst we ourselves are anthropologists, cultural historians, and art historians, we welcome others to contribute. We particularly welcome innovative perspectives.
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Why carpets? The making and use of heavy textiles for practical, aesthetic, social and spiritual purposes is core to the lives and histories of communities across the globe, and is deeply integrated into their social world and belief systems. Carpets are artefacts which have a complex relationship with the market for antiquities, global capitalism, and colonialism, a relationship that has changed over time in response to geopolitics and economics.
Our website offers resources for others interested in this work. The group provides a virtual (and sometimes real) space for people who want to think in new ways about carpets and learn and collaborate with each other.
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