A woman seeking a Persian carpet for her London home ended up having it made by the same ethnic group that had made the original.

The story of the quest was told to the Oregonian by the owners of Kush Hand-Knotted Brian Robins and Rebecca Lurie.

She explained that the client had seen a picture of the rug and planted a garden to the same pattern, before trying to find the article and discovering it is on display in the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Ms Lurie used an Iranian contact to trace the origins of the carpet – known as The Spring of Khosrow – and was able to track it to a former part of Iran now in Armenia, commissioning the ancestors of the original makers to hand-weave a replica.

Iranian efforts to preserve and sustain Persian carpet-making traditions include a recent application to have the Fars region's own style included in the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity list, the Tehran Times reported.