The khes is a thick handwoven cotton cover, usually in a two-colour geometric weave, made on a pit loom and used as a wrap, a blanket and a bedspread. A girl's dowry included a stack of them, often woven or at least commissioned by her own household.
The durrie is the flat woven cotton floor covering, made on a horizontal frame, often by women at home rather than by professional weavers, in stripes or geometric designs and sometimes with names and dates woven in.
Both were made in enormous quantity for household use rather than for sale, which is why they were never treated as a craft with a market and why so few old ones survive in any collection.
Panipat, now in Haryana, became the industrial centre for both and turned them into export products, and the handwoven village article disappeared into that.
A dowry durrie with a bride's name and a year woven into the border is a dated document from a household that produced no other written record. Almost none has been collected.
The khes is woven double, two layers interlocking so that the pattern reverses on the back. That is why it is thick and why it takes a skilled weaver rather than an ordinary one.
The cotton was grown, ginned, spun and dyed within a few miles of the loom for most of the tradition's life. The chain from the field to the bed was entirely local, and every step of it has now been replaced by something bought.
Both were made at home for dowry and for use. Mill cloth and polyester replaced them and the weaving communities left the trade, and the old pieces are sold now as textiles rather than as bedding.