PROGGIES, clippies and lambs' lugs are just some of the rag mat varieties which will be on display this summer.

Beamish Museum, near Chester-le-Street, County Durham, is holding an exhibition of the mats, which once covered the floor of almost every home in the region.

The exhibition, which will run until August 5, takes place in the porter room in the town and features a selection of the finest examples from the Beamish collection.

Alongside the traditional abstract and geometric designs, is a mat produced to celebrate Queen Victoria's diamond jubilee and other pictorial subjects.

There will also be mat-making demonstrations each day at the pit cottages in the museum's Colliery Village.

Beamish staff recently discovered a collection of 19th Century glass plates in a rubbish tip at Consett, which included a photograph showing women working at a mat frame while men sat nearby drinking beer and playing dominoes.

The image, called Miners' Strike 1892, is now in the museum's photographic archive.

It is possible that the rag mat- making technique was used in Scandinavia and may even date from the time of the Viking invasion and settlements in the North of England.

Rag mats, made from the clippings of old clothes, were extremely popular in the early 19th and 20th Centuries, in the days of stone-flagged floors.