Travels with Textiles November 2025

What's in a carpet? A great deal according to the historian and carpet scholar Dorothy Armstrong, who has just published a book called Threads of Empire: A History of the World in 12 Carpets.   For centuries carpets have been the most coveted and expensive of textiles, they have even attracted carpet forgers, and almost no other textile has done that. Every empire builder, king and prince has wanted the finest carpets to signify his power and status. But so often the carpets themselves have been made in humblest of circumstances by people whose names are lost to us.   This episode of Travels with Textiles journeys around the world from Japan to Romania, from the frozen steppes of Siberia to the fringes of the Sahara Desert to find out how history looks through the lens of a carpet.