The Textile Museum Journal: Reading Networks of Coloniality and Capitalism Through “Oriental” Carpets

As part of our online interview series for The Textile Museum Journal, contributing scholar Dorothy Armstrong explores two Punjabi carpets and the networks of colonialism and capitalism that influenced their production. Both carpets were made in the final decades of the 19th century but under very different conditions: one in an independent commercial factory and the other in a British government jail. Dr. Armstrong examines these carpets as objects shaped by their makers, as maps of global connections in a time of great change and as reflections of contrasting power dynamics in production.  

Through her research, Dr. Armstrong aims to reveal the contentious and conflicting landscape of carpet production in late 19th-century Punjab. She also considers the challenges of studying carpets using a global historical perspective, addressing issues around sources, pre-existing biases and research methods.  

About Dorothy Armstrong  

Dorothy Armstrong, Ph.D. is a historian of material culture. She has taught at the Royal College of Art, Edinburgh College of Art, the School of Oriental and African Studies and Oxford University. She was the May Beattie Fellow in Carpet Studies at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, from 2021 to 2022, and is now Honorary Research Associate at the Ashmolean Museum. She has published and lectured widely on carpets, and her current book, Threads of Empire: A History of the World in Twelve Carpets, will be published in early 2025.