April 2026 | Milan, Italy – During Milan Design Week 2026, Swiss textile house Fischbacher 1819 will present a series of hand-knotted and flat-woven carpets as part of its Silk Road collection, developed in collaboration with Zollanvari, a third-generation Iranian carpet manufacturer based in Switzerland.
Building on the rich storytelling of the acclaimed Silk Road textile collection, launched earlier thisyear and shaped by references to historic trade routes, material exchange and evolving craft traditions, the new carpet range, which features four designs, translates these ideas into woven floor coverings shaped by material and process.
The designs, developed by the Fischbacher 1819 Atelier, led by Iranian-born creative director Camilla Douraghy Fischbacher, draw on Persian mythology and Silk Road history. The four carpets – Kamila, Bejan, Jamshid and Kamran – reference figures from the Shahnameh and related cultural narratives. Kamila and Bejan reinterpret a historic Zoroastrian motif, while Jamshid and Kamran explore more abstract compositions, from layered, landscape-like surfaces to deconstructed geometric forms. As each piece is handmade, slight variations in size and colour are inherent to the process.
Each of the four designs is made using hand-spun highland wool sourced from the Zagros Mountains, prized for its softness and durability. A combination of hand-knotting and flatweave techniques, including Gabbeh, Soumakh and Souf three-dimensional pile, creates variation in surface, depth and texture across the designs. The wool is dyed entirely with natural pigments derived from locally grown plants, including indigo for blue, pomegranate for warm golds, wild dill for greens, walnut for browns, and madder root for rich reds and ranges. The dyeing process is slow and precise, often taking up to 48 hours to achieve depth and permanence of colour.
Produced by nomadic and semi-nomadic women from tribes including the Afshar, Luri and Qashqai, the carpets are woven as part of seasonal migration through the Zagros Mountains. Working on mobile looms, these makers continue a lineage of craft passed down through generations, where weaving is embedded within daily life. Within this tradition, textiles act as carriers of memory and identity, with pattern, structure and texture recording movement across time, each knot contributing to a surface that holds both material and meaning.
Presented at Fischbacher’s Brera showroom from April 20–26, the collaboration with Zollanvari introduces a new dimension to the Silk Road collection, realised through traditional weaving techniques.
A small selection of lifestyle imagery, photographed in Bukhara, is available to download now.
The Silk Road Carpet Collection | Milan Design Week 2026
20th - 26th April 2026, 9.30am – 6pm daily
UK Press Preview, 20th April 2026, 9.30am - 6pm
ABOUT FISCHBACHER 1819
Fischbacher 1819 is a family-owned Swiss textile house. Generations of experience over two centuries have established the brand as a market leader in the design, creation and manufacture of luxurious and elegant furnishing fabrics, woven floor coverings, and wallcoverings for the international design industry. Based in St. Gallen, Switzerland, the company is led by 6th generation CEO Michael Fischbacher, and creative director Camilla Douraghy Fischbacher who are as passionate and forward-thinking as the five generations before them.
Under their stewardship, Fischbacher 1819 has reached unparalleled global success through its continued innovation and development in artisanal textile craftsmanship and sustainability, striking a balance between the changing demands of the times and the unchanging principles of the craft. Fischbacher 1819’s talented in-house design studios, based in St Gallen and Como, take their inspiration from an array of cultural and historical influences which they reinterpret and reimagine to create stylistically diverse and luxurious designs, season after season. Fischbacher 1819’s collections are sold worldwide through an exclusive network of showrooms, agents and distributors.
fischbacher1819.com | @fischbacher1819