Our Story
Mirzapur: Why This City Produces the World's Finest Rugs
Four centuries of craft tradition, a river city steeped in wool and colour. An exploration of the place Shabnam Overseas calls home.
· Shabnam Overseas
On the banks of the Ganges in Uttar Pradesh, Mirzapur and its neighbouring towns form one of the great carpet-weaving regions of the world. The tradition here reaches back to the Mughal era, when royal patronage turned rug-making into a high art, and it has been passed from parent to child ever since.
A city built around the loom
In neighbourhoods like Kantit and Gajiya, where our own workshop sits, the sound of looms is part of daily life. Dyers, weavers, washers and finishers work within a few streets of each other, so a rug can move from dyed wool to finished piece without leaving the community that made it.
Knowledge you cannot shortcut
Reading a colour map, keeping tension even across a wide warp, judging when a wash has brought out the lustre of the wool: these are skills learned over years at the loom, not in a manual. The weavers we work with grew up watching their parents and grandparents, and it shows in the evenness and depth of their work.
From Mirzapur to your home
Every Shabnam Overseas rug is made to order here, then shipped worldwide with duties included. When you buy from us you buy directly from the place the rug was made, with no middle layers between you and the people who wove it.
