more traditionally Oriental themes were incorporated into the finest Scandinavian rugs, with the Tree of Life motif featuring most prominently. A standby in Persian rugs, the Tree of Life symbol was adapted by the rug-makers of Scandinavia to represent family trees and ties. By the 1880s, traditional Scandinavian rugs – and, most especially, Ryas – were hugely popular throughout northern Europe. In addition, Sweden had begun to produce a very distinctive style of rug, the Rollakan. These pieces were generally flat-woven rugs bedecked with elaborate tapestry art, making them very distinctive from the generally abstract, thick-piled Ryas – even as they were used for similar purposes. From humble beginnings, the craft of rug-making in Scandinavia has blossomed into a complex art form with various outlets for craftspeople to explore. And though Rya rugs fell out of favor with the nobles of Scandinavia and were subsequently relegated to the domain of folk art, there was a massive explosion in the popularity of the traditional Rya rug in the middle years of the twentieth century – a phenomenon that continues on today. Ryas had been made with abstract, geometric designs for centuries, and had always been made with thick shaggy pile. This design style was particularly appealing to the modernist designers of mid-twentieth-century Europe and North America, who felt that shaggy, colorful carpets worked well to offset the harsher and colder design elements that dominated their own aesthetic: in a home with many straight lines, hard woods, and metals, the soft and colorful design style of Rya rugs gave a sense of warmth and color that often worked to create a homier house. Designers as influential as Ray Eames, Le Corbusier, and Frank Lloyd Wright, were all known to enjoy the effect of a traditional Scandinavian rug. Rug making techniques The art of rug-making is ancient and extraordinarily complex – not to mention culturally significant to the peoples among whom such traditions developed. The complicated lists of knot-types and weaving techniques long employed by the master weavers of China and Persia are indicative of the importance of rug-making to those cultures. Though rug-making came to Scandinavia notably later than it did to traditional rug-making cultures in the Eastern world, an equally complex and sophisticated methodology for weaving fine rugs did develop in those northern European countries. Rya rugs, for example, are woven with a combination of techniques that include weaving tapestry, needlework, and carpet knots. Traditionally, Scandinavian Rya rugs were hand-made by artisans who would add symmetric Turkish (or Ghiordes) knots directly to the warp through a specially woven backing. Small holes in the weave allowed the rug-makers to insert evenly spaced knots using a larger tapestry needle. Unlike many other culturally important rugs, Ryas were used with the pile facing downward, the better to insulate the wearer. As such, design elements and ornamentation were woven into the back of the rugs, with the pile consisting of solid colors. Over time, this was reversed, creating the colorful Ryas that caught the eye of the mid-twentieth century designers who did so much to popularize them. It is difficult to talk about the history and style of Scandinavian rugs without mentioning Marta Maas-Fjetterstrom. One of the most important figures in the entire history of Scandinavian rug-making, Marta Maas-Fjetterstrom was a mid-twentieth century rug designer whose pieces are among the most noteworthy rugs ever designed. Working from 1919 until her death in 1941, Maas-Fjetterstrom focused on creating rugs that communicated the intimacy of the natural world through a modernist approach to lines and geometric figures. With pieces in some of the most exclusive art museums