Dr. Dorothy Armstrong untangles British efforts to redefine colonial Indian culture, through a 19th century knotted pile carpet woven in Lahore Central Jail.
Produced with the low-cost labour of Indian prisoners, jail carpets were big business in the British Empire. Beyond physical coercion, imperial authorities also trapped India in their vision of 'authentic' oriental aesthetics, privileging Persian patterns and Parisian market demands over traditional Mughal methods. This particular carpet was one of a pair, purchased at the 1881 Punjab Exhibition for what would become the V&A Museum. Riding the history of both carpets - one surviving, and missing - into mass manufacture reveals how South Kensington intervened in the crafts of the colonised, centralising control and defining expectations both in India and at home, then and now.
PRESENTER: Dr. Dorothy Armstrong, May Beattie Visiting Fellow in Carpet Studies at the Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford. She was previously a lecturer and tutor in Material Histories of Asia for the V&A/Royal College of Art History of Design Programme.
ART: Knotted Pile Carpet, Lahore Central Jail (c. 1880).
IMAGE: 'Carpet with woollen pile, palmette and leaf designs on a black ground with a red ground border, woven in Lahore Jail, c.1880'.
SOUNDS: V&A.
PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic.

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