Chinese Art Deco rugs, woven in the 1920s and 30s, broke completely from tradition. As Shanghai and Tientsin opened to Western trade, designers — most famously the American Walter Nichols — combined Chinese motifs with the bold geometry, asymmetry and unusual colour of the Art Deco movement, producing rugs unlike anything woven before.

The result is a graphic, colourful, unmistakably Jazz-Age carpet — sea-foam greens, dusty pinks, golds and blues, open fields and stylised florals — that suits both period and modern interiors and is increasingly collectible.