The western traveller Ami Boué, who visited the town in 1836–1838, reported that "mainly young girls, under shelters or in corridors, engage in carpet weaving. They earn only five francs a month and the payment was even lower before". By 1868, the annual production of carpets in Chiprovtsi had surpassed 14,000 square metres. Following the Russo-Turkish War in 1877–1878, Chiprovtsi, along with all of northern Bulgaria and the region around Sofia, became part of the newly liberated Principality of Bulgaria, the predecessor of modern Bulgaria. In 1896, almost 1,400 women from Chiprovtsi and the region were engaged in carpet weaving. In 1920, the locals founded the "Manual Labour" carpet-weaving cooperative society, the first of its kind in the country.