Textiles designer Brigitte Singh lovingly lays out a piece of cloth embossed with a red poppy plant she says was probably designed for emperor Shah Jahan, builder of the Taj Mahal, four centuries ago.

Glance around any department store and you’ll find a veritable buffet of textile patterns that you can rattle off without a second thought: plaid, stripes, paisley, seersucker, fleur-de-lis ...

Patterns created across a period of 60 years reflect the zeitgeist of their time and the breadth and depth of IKEA’s textile department, such as the design ‘RANDIG BANAN’ by Inez Svensson ...

"I was the first to give a renaissance to this kind of Mughal design," 67-year-old Brigitte Sindh says.