Allahabad rugs are similar to those of Agra, but the latter are as a rule preferable.
Amritsar gives employment to over twenty thousand men and boys, and supplies the market with some of the finest of modern Indian rugs. Leading English and American firms have factories located there, and for that reason rugs brought into the Occident from Amritsar are reliable. They are firm in texture, and have fast colors. The manufacturers realize the importance of these attributes in a rug, and their own responsibility in the matter.
The Dhurrie (Durrie) is a strong, well-made rug of cotton, often in stripes of blue, brown, or gray, with narrow yellow and red lines. Some Dhurries end in a fringe, and are square. In India they are largely used by the foreign population, and in the United States they are especially appropriate for summer time. They are made chiefly at Agra, Cawnpur, Delhi, Lucknow, and in the vicinity of Bombay.
Ellore rugs belong to the inexpensive class, but the designs and colors are pleasing. As they are made chiefly of fibre mixed with wool, they are not durable.
Formerly Haidarabad sent out rugs famous for their beauty, with designs in the forms of medallions, filled with flat floral ornaments and woven with wool pile on a cotton foundation. But the modern Haidarabad by no means compares with the antique.
Jaipur rugs are generally made in the schools of art. They contain many Persian designs representing animals and the cypress tree. The borders are floral, and the field is generally ivory, red, or blue.
Lahore, the British capital of the Punjab, has rugs woven in both wool and cotton, and the work is done mostly in jails. The designs are Persian, and the texture embraces from forty to one hundred knots to the square inch.
Madras rugs are chiefly made in large quantities for commercial and export purposes.
Masulipatam rugs were once noted for their beauty, but now many of them are poor in design and workmanship.
Mirzapur rugs are sometimes wrongly sold for Turkish, which they somewhat resemble. The antiques are very durable, but this cannot be said of all the modern ones, the vegetable fibre that is used in part in the construction of them not being durable. Few are exported to the United States. The colors are often black, orange, or grayish-white.