Four Generations of Rug-Making, Through the Founder's Eyes

Heritage

By Saima Abrar, Founder

Saima Abrar, founder of House of Bohi, with her parents in Bhadohi, India, in front of handwoven wool and jute rugs. — With my parents, in Bhadohi, India. Where it all began.

The House of Bohi story does not begin in a Sydney showroom. It begins in Bhadohi, my hometown in northern India, also known as the Carpet City of India, where my family has been making handmade rugs for four generations. This is my family’s work, which I now carry forward with pride, and I want to share its origin, as every rug we make is woven from it.

A loom in Bhadohi

If you have never heard of Bhadohi, you are not alone. For most of my life, it was simply home, one of the older rug-making towns in the world, with weaving traditions reaching back to the 16th century. Today it is the heart of India’s hand-knotted carpet industry. Rugs made here travel quietly into homes, hotels, and showrooms across the world, often white labelled under other names. Ours among them.

Haji Bismillah, great-grandfather of Saima Abrar, seated in white kurta at his home in Bhadohi, India, the family's first-generation rug weaver. — My great-grandfather, Haji Bismillah. He sat at the loom himself.

My great-grandfather, Haji Bismillah, was a weaver. Not a merchant, not a workshop owner. But a weaver. He sat at the loom himself and wove rugs. A single hand-knotted rug could take him months. The pattern lived partly on paper and partly in his head, and the knots were tied one at a time, by hand, the way they still are. There were no shortcuts then. There are none now.

The generations between

My grandfather, Mukhtar Ansari, was the first in our family to get a formal education. Having the knack for manufacturing and the business of scale, he set up his own making units, and travelled to the Nordic countries and across Europe to build relationships with retail buyers and sell directly. For a young man from Bhadohi in his day, that was no small thing. Those were the first homes abroad our work reached. Most of the time, our name never travelled with it.

My grandfather, Mukhtar Ahmad Ansari, in Geneva, late 1980s, on a buyer visit.

My father, Abrar Ahmad Ansari, carried that work forward since 1984, when he was twenty, but with his attention turned inward, back toward the craft itself. He became head of production and stayed close to the looms and the people behind them. He understands the materials by touch, and which artisans work best on which patterns and techniques. Who has the patience for a fine pattern, who has the hand for a bold one. The daily relationships he built in Bhadohi are the same ones House of Bohi rests on today.

Abrar Ansari at the loom in Bhadohi, India, in conversation with two seated weavers and other artisans in the workshop. — My father, Abrar Ahmad Ansari, at the loom with our weavers.

The fourth generation

I grew up around our family’s workshop, on stacks of wool and finished rugs spread across the floor. Rolls of soft wool. Patterns being graphed. The rhythmic sound of scissors cutting through pile. Hands knotting fringes. Finished pieces packed and loaded onto trucks, bound for other parts of the world. To me, as a child, it was not a luxury. It was simply what we did.

Saima Abrar as a child, playing with her brother on a pile of rugs in the family warehouse in Bhadohi, India. — My brother and me, playing on a pile of rugs in our family godown.

Like many from a small town, my path took me away for education, and eventually to Sydney, but the craft never left me. Some years in, longing to reconnect with the craft and my roots, I wanted to build something of my own. Properly and on my own terms. So I founded House of Bohi.

The aim is simple. To bring our family’s work directly to Australian homes, made by the people who have always made it, under the name they have always belonged to. To give the craft, and the people who carry it, the visibility and credit that have always been theirs to claim. We work from a studio in Sydney, while the looms keep turning in Bhadohi as they always have. The essence of what we do has not changed. Only the path from loom to home.

Saima Abrar at the House of Bohi booth at Design Show Australia 2026, with handmade rugs, sample tiles and a display of natural fibres like wool, jute and tencel. — Design Show Australia, 2026. The fourth generation, carrying it forward here.

What changes, and what stays the same

Four generations of rug-making does not leave a craft untouched, and yet the heart of it has not moved. I have simply helped the craft reach a little further, in a more personal and direct way.

What is new is here: the studio in Sydney, the conversations with Australian homeowners and designers. A design travels from a sketchbook in Sydney to our workshop in Bhadohi within hours. Patterns, colours, and techniques have evolved with time.

What has not changed: The colours are still dyed by hand. A rug is still woven by human hands, not a machine. The same families are still doing this work, generation after generation. The looms are not faster than they were, and that is not something to be fixed. It is the reason the rugs last.

A note from me

There is a particular feeling in owning a rug that was made by hand, for you, by people whose names you could learn. One that holds up not for a season, but for the decades your home will see.

A rug like that is the one you keep, the one you hand on, the one you point to years from now and say, that is the piece our memories were made on. When you choose one of ours, you are choosing months of work, hands we can name, a town that has been weaving for more than four hundred years, and helping give the next generation a choice to stay.

If you would like a glimpse into the making, our Process page walks you through how it all comes together. Or if you are imagining a piece for a particular room, our Custom Rugs page is the place to begin.

Saima Abrar
Founder, House of Bohi