Afghan War Rugs

Lately, I've been trying to assemble our vast and scattered rug picture stashes into one large, organized archive - no small task for over 20,000 photos and growing daily! While sifting through the pictures, I came across this set of photos of an Afghan War Rug that passed through here in early 2007.

A hand grenade border, with a map of Afghanistan in the field, accompanied by tanks, jet fighters, an assault rifle and what looks like a troop transport helicopter of some kind.

These rugs are always fascinating to me. They are widely collected, and have been woven since the Russian invasion/occupation of Afghanistan ~1980-1990. These pictoral rugs feature images of weaponry, vehicles and other war-related items. It is believed that they started weaving these rugs for no more complex a reason than it was what they saw around them. Sort of the rug weaving equivalent of the old axiom "write what you know." Their lives were war, so they wove their lives into their rugs - and continue to do so today.

Here are more close-ups of this particular rug: (click to enlarge)

There are many articles available online on Afghan War Rugs, including this article at Oriental Rug Review and this article from SFGate.com.

by Dave Wagner at Rug Care Central