"Extensive text, beautifully-written and well-researched, this book leads us through many historical and geographical adventures and towards a plethora of full-colour plates...These pages ground us by sharing a complex culture expressed through an object of practical simplicity." —Ptolemy Mann, Selvedge

The Michael and Amy Rothberg Collection of knotted-pile tribal and nomadic bags and other rare small format pile weavings, among them many pieces made for women's dowries and other ceremonial functions, is recognised as the best of its kind anywhere in the world. The collection has been carefully and thoughtfully assembled over the past four decades. Michael Rothberg's collections are above all distinguished by the collector's acutely sensitive and perceptive eye for the best museum-quality material available on the international market. Specialists in the field and other collectors and tribal weaving enthusiasts have awaited the publication of this part of the Rothberg Collection for many years, ever since a selection of the material was shown at Sotheby's in Los Angeles in a feature exhibition during the American Conference on Oriental Rugs in January 1996. The scope of the collection includes antique pile bags, from the Transcaucasus region, as well as from the Shahsavan, Kurdish, Varamin region, Qashqa'i, Khamseh, Luri, Bakhtiari, Afshar and Baluch tribes of Iran.