Tabriz is a city in north-western Iran which has a major weaving tradition dating to the 15^th century. Tabriz is probably the most prolific carpet-producing center in the world, and certainly one of the oldest. This enchanted city was established more than a thousand years ago. After many invasions, occupations and wars, Tabriz took the ancient techniques of the past and created a huge rug-exporting industry. The finest era of Persian rug weaving was the Safavid Dynasty (1499 - 1722), when the Safavids overthrew the Turks who had occupied Tabriz. They gave the city one of the first Royal workshops, making it the artistic center of Persian culture. It was at this time that weavers from Tabriz introduced the curvilinear designs to the courts at Istanbul. After a decline of a few hundred years, Tabriz began re-establishing its position in the mid 19^th century as the market center for the export of Persian rugs to the West. Today, many rugs produced in Tabriz emulate the artistic heritage of the Persian Safavid carpet, and when a designer in any part of the world wants to commission a certain pattern to be hand-woven, Tabriz is the city that he visits.

Mille-fleurs (in French), known in English as millefleur or mille-fleur literally means "thousand flowers" and refers to a background made of many small flowers and plants. It was an especially popular motif in tapestry and other applied arts and crafts during the Middle Ages in Europe. The term is also used to describe Oriental rugs with a similar design, originally Persian but later produced in much of the Middle East and Mughal India. The medieval European style may have been influenced by Persian miniatures or carpets. The Mughal emperors Shah Jahan (1627-1658) and Shah Aurangzeb (1658-1707) had a great appreciation for this particular style and they commissioned their weavers to replicate these fine delicate motifs in the carpets that adorned their palaces throughout India. In 1730 the Persian Shah Nadir Quli (1688-1747) conquered parts of India and returned home with countless treasures, including textiles and Millefleurs carpets that made a great impact on the decorative arts of Persia and the surrounding territories. A “millefleurs” carpet has a bottom which is livened up of a motive of latticework; every containing alveolus is a flower, of a big realism, is a palmette. Certain specialists see an Italian origin in this decor, also present in the Indian architectural decoration of the XVII^th century, and XVIII^th centuries, as besides on the whole decorative arts, notably, on rooms in nephrite set by precious stones. Several carpets adorned with these compositions are endowed with a line of a multicoloured silk chain, a characteristic of weavers from Lahore, Pakistan.