Introducing the Aguagramas art rug collection by Unknown Carpets

The artworks of Chilean artist Patricia Claro have been born again as a beautiful rug series

A question that many rug designers and retailers are asked of their finest carpets is ‘But how can you put these carpets on the floor?’ It is one that Abhinav Sethi and wife Alejandra Dominguez of Unknown Carpets heard multiple times at their recent exhibition at Collêctio‘s gallery in Vitacura, Chile (May-July 2025).

The two-month exhibition marked the completion of the Aguagramas collection, created in collaboration with Chilean artist Patricia Claro. The series has been in development for six years, with new rugs added each year until the final fourteen were completed. The first two in the collection, on show at Carpet Diem in Paris in November 2024, appeared in COVER 77, as a taster for the creativity yet to come.

But to understand the collection you have to know something about the background of Unknown Carpets and the organic and intuitive way that owners Abhinav and Alejandra like to develop rug designs. It all began eleven years ago when Abhinav, who had trained as a graphic designer and was working on projections for musical artists, created a design for his uncle’s rug business in Jaipur.

Watching the man weaving his design into a hand-knotted rug, Abhinav became drawn into the process and started to develop ideas with his uncle. ‘I’m still learning now, but what has always really excited me is the material,’ he explains. ‘My uncle gave me freedom to explore different blends of yarns, and we started to use a variation of the Turkish knot.’

Unknown Carpets did not fully take shape until Abhinav met Alejandra, a travelling photographer from Chile, in a café in Jaipur. He asked her to take images of the rugs he was making, and she began to talk about the work of her artist mother, Patricia Claro, and how it would make beautiful rug designs. It was then that the idea for the Claro collection began and their relationship and the new brand blossomed.

Unknown Carpets is now situated in Chile, where Abhinav and Alejandra balance work with caring for two young children. With the production still in Rajasthan, it requires a great deal of travelling, but the couple have introduced something quite new to the area in Chile, where washed-out, vintage-look Ushak design rugs with superlow pile dominate.

In recent exhibitions, Abhinav was impressed by how interested the visitors were in the product. The rugs were shown on the wall like artworks-hence ‘that question’ kept coming up.

And now to the beautiful fourteen-piece collection based on the art of Patricia Claro-not a literal translation of her paintings but a new version created for a new format. The Aguagramas collection got its name from the word that Claro uses to describe the abstract shapes created by the dance of light on water, formulating what she would refer to as ‘water letters’. For the past twenty years she has travelled regularly to the south of Chile, inspired by the undulating water patterns of the river, as well as Chinese calligraphy. For the collection photoshoot the rugs were transported back to the location, so the rugs could resonate with their surroundings and to bring the story back full circle.

There is an amazing flow to the designs, the flow of the water well expressed in wool and silk. What makes this possible is Abhinav’s approach to rug production, in which he gives everyone enough time for the process to evolve naturally. The designs arise when they are ready-in the case of Aguagramas, a few rugs every year, each one revealing something new. Abhinav says he was eager ‘to capture all elements of her work’.

For Claro, the paintings take a long time to build up, layer upon layer. For Abhinav, each rug is created using only two colours, simple design made with wool and silk yarns that are lighter and darker variations of the same colour. Abhinav has ‘trust in the process’ and likes to play with different washes, materials, dyes and knots. For this collection he uses variations of the Turkish and Moroccan knots and a Persian knot, to give different surfaces to the art. He says: ‘We don’t want to control what is happening on the carpets. We surrender to the will of material and enjoy whatever develops.’

The collection has been in development for as long as the company has existed and now stands for the true intention behind Unknown Carpets: the creation of beautiful rugs that evolve alchemically into expressions of passion and artistry.