Detailed ethnographic information is available from the works of ethnologists like Vsevolod Miller and Soviet Russian surveys conducted by the Institute of Anthropology and Ethnography (cited in) However, during the long period of industrial production, the connection between specific designs and their ethnic and geographic origins may have been lost. Research was published mainly in Russian language, and still is not fully available to non-Russian speaking scientists. From a Western perspective, when scientific interest started to develop in Oriental rugs by the end of the nineteenth century, the Caucasian regions, being part of the Soviet Union, closed up to the West. Thus, Western information about carpet weaving in the Caucasian countries was not as detailed as from other regions of the "carpet belt".
