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How the coziest carpets went from Alexander the Great?s tents to your living room In her new book The Elements of a Home, design historian Amy Azzarito explores the stories behind 60 common household objects. The following chapter on flokati rugs is reprinted with permission from the publisher, Chronicle Books.

David Hockney?s Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy is one of the most celebrated portraits in London?s Tate Gallery. In the iconic painting, Britain?s 1970s ?it? couple?textile designer Celia Birtwell and fashion designer Ossie Clark, along with their cat?are pictured in their living room. Clark?s bare feetare buried in a shaggy white rug. And not just any white rug, this is one of history?s fluffiest: the flokati. Flokati fluffiness is fluffiness on steroids: The average pile is 3 inches [7.5 cm] high, while the best-quality version, tightly woven with the finest wool, can have a pile up to 5 inches [12 cm] high. (If you drop an earring in a flokati, you might as well forget about seeing it again.)
Courtesy Chronicle Books

While that carpet may seem like it belonged to the era of sunken living rooms, harvest gold kitchens, and lava lamps, it actually comes with an ancient pedigree. Alexander the Great used flokati, the original shag carpet, to warm his campaign tents as he swept across Egypt and Asia Minor in the fourth century. The rug was created by shepherds living in the highest villages of the Pindus mountain range in Greece....