English and Donegal rugs represent the hand-knotted weaving of the British Isles, and they are bound up with one movement above all: Arts and Crafts. Reacting against mass-produced Victorian goods, designers like William Morris and C.F.A. Voysey revived hand-knotted carpet weaving in England, and in 1898 the firm of Alexander Morton established the famous carpet works at Killybegs in County Donegal, Ireland.

Donegal carpets, woven there ever since, are known for bold, stylised floral and geometric Arts-and-Crafts designs and good scale, in soft, muted colour — a distinctly British and Irish alternative to the carpets of the Continent and the East.