Dorothy Armstrong, "Threads of Empire: A History of the World in Twelve Carpets" (St. Martin's Press, 2025)

Sep 10, 2025

Dorothy Armstrong, a historian specializing in the material culture of South, Central, and West Asia, delves into the fascinating history embodied in carpets. She reveals how these textiles reflect power dynamics, spirituality, and cultural narratives throughout time. Armstrong discusses the stark divide between wealthy carpet consumers and the artisans who create them, highlighting women's historical struggles in the craft. From the ancient Paziric carpet to imperial Ottoman legacies, her insights weave a rich tapestry of history and artistry.

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INSIGHT

Objects Spark Scholarly Reinvention

Dorothy Armstrong retrained academically after a lifelong curiosity about carpets and their histories.
Objects led her to study SOAS, the V&A/BNA, and a PhD to trace carpets' biographies and makers.

ANECDOTE

Cultural Habit Of Respecting Carpets

Morteza Hajizadeh recounts avoiding walking on a colleague's carpet in New Zealand out of cultural habit.
Dorothy Armstrong emphasizes this respect reflects appreciation for craft and intention behind carpets.

INSIGHT

Carpets As Performative Power

Armstrong argues carpets functioned as deliberate displays of power for rulers and elites.
Possessing rare Eastern carpets signalled global reach and elite status to European audiences.

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A spellbinding look at the history of the world through the stories of twelve carpets

Beautiful, sensuous, and enigmatic, great carpets follow power. Emperors, shahs, sultans and samurai crave them as symbols of earthly domination. Shamans and priests desire them to evoke the spiritual realm. The world's 1% hunger after them as displays of extreme status. And yet these seductive objects are made by poor and illiterate weavers, using the most basic materials and crafts; hedgerow plants for dyes, fibres from domestic animals, and the millennia-old skills of interweaving warps, wefts and knots.

In Threads of Empire: A History of the World in Twelve Carpets (St. Martin's Press, 2025), Dorothy Armstrong tells the histories of some of the world's most fascinating carpets, exploring how these textiles came into being then were transformed as they moved across geography and time in the slipstream of the great. She shows why the world's powerful were drawn to them, but also asks what was happening in the weavers' lives, and how they were affected by events in the world outside their tent, village or workshop.

In its wide-ranging examination of these dazzling objects, from the 5th century BCE contents of the tombs of Scythian chieftains, to the carpets under the boots of Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill at the 1945 Yalta Peace Conference, Threads of Empire uncovers a new, hitherto hidden past right beneath our feet.

Dorothy Armstrong is a historian of the material culture of South, Central and West Asia. She has taught at the Royal College of Art, Edinburgh College of Art and the University of Oxford. She was the Beattie Fellow in Carpet Studies at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, where she is now honorary research fellow. Threads of Empire is her first book.

Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature.

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