[Jeff Sun]

Filiberto-

Yes. Ethnicity is part of it. So is geography.

For example: There are many Turkmen in Pakistan, yet in my mind the carpets they create are different than their geo-centric forerunners. Yes, the designs and methods are clearly derivative of older designs, and maybe you could even call a Peshawar carpet a "Turkoman Design", but to call it a Turkoman carpet, even if it were woven by people of Turkoman extraction seems a stretch. The popular colloquialism seems to be to call their carpets "Pakistani".

Conversely, there are many Tibetan Refugees in Nepal, they make rugs and even though they are often of a very modern design and the methods and materials are not precisely the same as north of the Himalayas, the popular colloquialism is to call them "Tibetan Carpets"...even though I personally don't see them as such.

To take it to this particular example to the extreme, there is a large Tibetan community in Queens, New York. If they suddenly took to making carpets rather than their day to day office jobs, would their carpets be "Tibetan", or "New Yorker"? Or something else entirely?

But circling back, yes ethnicity does play a part. So does Geography. Where the line is crossed in determining the "origin designation" of a carpet is not always very clear.