Nepal, the Oriental rug of today

In the Kathmandu valley, workshops still knot rugs point by point, by hand, with a hand-spun Himalayan wool. This is what is called a Nepalese rug: a hand-knotted rug, made in Nepal according to a craftsmanship that Tibetan refugees brought there from 1959. The principle is that of the Oriental rug: each point of pile is a knot made by hand around the warp threads, then cut; only the knot itself differs from those of Iran or Turkey. Sandrine Demas has a phrase to say it to her clients: “Nepal is the Oriental rug of today.” The house has had its rugs knotted there since its beginnings, with a partner workshop it has known for twenty-five years.

Where does the craftsmanship of Nepalese workshops come from?

It comes from Tibet. After 1959, Tibetan refugees settled in Nepal passed on their weaving craft there, and it was from them that the Nepalese hand-knotted rug industry was built.

The dates are known. In 1960, the Swiss Red Cross and the Swiss technical assistance agency founded the Jawalakhel Handicraft Centre to give work to the refugees. The weavers there took up the gestures inherited from their families and knotted wool rugs similar to those made in Tibet; Jawalakhel is often presented as the cradle of the hand-knotted wool rug in Nepal. Other centres followed, in Pokhara, Dhorpatan and the Solu Khumbu. Tibetan weavers trained Nepalese assistants, and the craftsmanship spread through the country.

The turning point came at the end of the 1970s. The upheavals in Iran and Afghanistan led European importers to look elsewhere for their knotted rugs, and they turned to Nepal. In the 1980s, rugs brought in about a third of the country's foreign currency. The phrase therefore also has a historical reality: when the classical Orient closed, part of its market reached the valleys of the Himalaya.

The sector then went through difficult years, between competition from cheaper rugs from India and China, controversies over working conditions and a fall in exports after 1993.

Why say that Nepal is the Oriental rug of today?

Because the gesture is the same and the image is understood immediately. The Oriental rug is Iran, Turkey, Afghanistan, part of the Caucasus: nomads who laid a rug on the ground to protect themselves from it, then made it their home and drew their motifs upon it. In Nepal, each point is still knotted by hand, a mountain wool is worked, the long tempo is accepted.

The founder of Diacasan learned the rug through the Orient, sorting, folding, touching pieces from those regions. It is this culture that allowed her to recognise in Nepal a workshop that does things well. The difference between the Nepalese knot and the Persian knot interests her less than what the two have in common: a rug made by hand, which folds, acquires a patina, and is handed down.

Folding is a good clue. A Nepalese knotted rug, washed and scraped at the end of its making, is supple enough to be folded, as Oriental rugs were once folded on buyers' pallets. A tufted rug, stiffer, travels rolled. The two gestures are compared in hand-knotted, hand-tufted.

Nepalese rug, Tibetan rug, rug knotted in Nepal: what are we talking about?

The word Tibetan designates the origin of the craftsmanship, the word Nepalese the country of making, and the word knotted the technique. A Tibetan rug made in Nepal since the 1960s is therefore, in most cases, a Nepalese rug.

Sandrine prefers to speak of a rug knotted in Nepal. The term “Nepalese rug” seems reductive to her: it says where the rug is made, not how nor with what material, and online it covers pieces unrelated to one another. To say “hand-knotted in Nepal” is to name both the gesture and the place. It is the mention carried by the records of the house, always paired with the material: Himalayan wool, sometimes hemp or silk.

Another term circulates among professionals: Indo-Nepalese. It designates rugs made in India in the Nepalese style, often smoother. The house works in India for hand-tufting, with the same counterpart since November 2000, but for knotting it remains in Nepal, where in its eyes the essence of this technique lies.

What does Himalayan wool change?

It gives the knotted rug its life. Spun by hand, Himalayan wool keeps a natural irregularity the house seeks: it catches the light differently according to the angle and the hour, and each field of colour vibrates slightly.

In Nepal, the house refuses New Zealand wool. Its purity and regularity are precious in India, for the clean whites and ecrus of tufting; in a knotted rug, they would cause the rug to lose what makes its character. The contrast between these two wools is detailed in Himalayan wool, New Zealand wool.

Making follows some fifteen stages: spinning, dyeing of the skeins, knotting on the loom, then, once the rug is off the loom, washing, scraping, turning, stretching and stabilising. For a large format, the work takes four to six months. The detail of these operations can be read in the journey of a knotted rug, from spinning to finishing, and on the page hand-knotting.

This working time has a lesser-known consequence. In knotting, each point demands the same gesture, whether the drawing is simple or intricate: the complexity of the motif therefore weighs less on the price than in tufting, where it counts for more. A highly graphic drawing thus finds its natural place in Nepal. And the rug ages well: over the years, it acquires a patina like a fine piece of furniture. What it becomes over time is told in a rug acquires a patina.

What the house has knotted in Nepal

Three collections are hand-knotted there, each with its own handwriting. They extend the publishing work described in what is a rug publisher: an artist, a material, a workshop.

SUR LE FIL translates the small-format engravings of Renaud Allirand into rugs of wool, hemp and silk: the rows of knots take the place of the furrows of the engraved plate. SPATIAL follows the gaze of the photographer Emmanuel Thibault towards a mineral and vegetal world, where texture becomes the subject. NEPALESE RUGS, finally, is the craftsmanship signature of the house: broad irregular fields of colour, a wool whose treatment remains particular to the workshop, and pieces such as Mikado, Santa Fe, Woodstock or Palazzo, at once contemporary and classical.

This collection has already crossed the border. A hotel in Varanasi, in India, wanted for one of its suites a piece that would converse with the spirituality of the place without imitating its codes: a NEPALESE RUGS piece knotted in Nepal now answers the carved wood of the furniture. The suite on the banks of the Ganges features among the house's realisations.

A large rug knotted in Nepal arrives folded in its crate. Once unfolded, a few days of walking over it are enough for it to take its place on the floor.

Text written by the house of Diacasan Edition from conversations with Sandrine Demas on material and craftsmanship, our exchanges with the Nepalese workshop and the historical sources cited, October 2026.

Sources: Nepali Times, The rise and fall of the Tibetan carpet industry; Wikipedia, Jawalakhel; Wikipedia, Oriental rug.