Book Description

The story of the Oriental Carpet Manufacturers Company, in its day by far the biggest carpet exporter of all, explores the history of the Near and Middle east in the twentieth century from the point of view of the men and women involved in the carpet trade, and of international companies.

Antony Wynn observed carpet weaving first hand when he was the OCM buyer in Hamadan in Iran from 1972–6. This splendid book is a reminder of how carpets connected people and places – and of the dynamism of the merchants who helped make Izmir ‘the pearl of the Levant’ and the OCM a global company, selling carpets from the entire area between Algeria and Tibet to the rest of the world.