Part 12

Condition controlling designs of Oriental Carpets.

A condition that has always controlled the designs of Oriental carpets is their rectangular shape, more often oblong than square. As a rule, there is a well-schemed border, enclosing the main portion or field over which the details of the pattern are symmetrically distributed. Simpler patterns in the field of a carpet or rug consist of repetitions of the same device or of a small number of different devices (see Plate II. fig. 4). Richer patterns display more organic pattern in the construction, of which the leading and continuous features are expressed as diversified bands, scrolls and curved stems; amongst these latter are very varied devices which play either predominant or subordinate parts in the whole effect of the design (Plate III. fig. 7). Angular and simplified treatments of these elaborate designs are rendered in many Asia Minor or Turkey carpets (Plate I. fig. 3); but the typical flowing and more graceful versions are of Persian origin (see Plate III. fig. 7, and Plate IV. fig. 9), usually of the 16th century. Mingled in such intricate stem designs or "arabesques" are details many of which have been derived on the one hand from Sassanian and even from far earlier Mesopotamian emblematical ornament based on cheetahs seizing gazelles, on floral forms, blossoms and buds so well conventionalized in Assyrian decoration, and on the other hand from Tatar and Chinese sources. The style, strong in suggestion of successive historical periods, seems to have been matured in Mosil engraved and damascened metal work of the 12th and 13th centuries before its occurrence in Persian carpet designs, the finest of which were produced about the reign of Shah Abbas. A good deal earlier than this period are carpets designed chiefly according to the simpler taste of the Sunnites, and such as these appear to be mentioned by Marco Polo (1256-1323) when writing that "in Turcomania they weave the handsomest carpets in the world." He quotes Conia (Konieh in Anatolia), Savast (Sivas in Asia Minor), some 300 m. north-east of Konieh, and Cassaria (Kaisaria or Caesaraea in Anatolia) as the chief weaving centres. It is the carpets from such places rather than from Persia that appear to have been the first Oriental ones known in European countries.

Carpets in Europe.

Entries of Oriental carpets are frequent in the inventories of European cathedral treasures. In England, for instance, carpets are said to have been first employed by Queen Eleanor of Castile and her suite during the latter part of the 13th century, who had them from Spain, where their manufacture was apparently carried on by Saracens or Moors in the southern part of the country. On the other hand, Pierre Dupont, a master carpet-maker of the Savonnerie (see below), gives his opinion in 1632 that the introduction of carpet-making into France was due to the Saracens after their defeat by Charles Martel in A.D. 726. But more historically precise is the record in the book of crafts (_Livre des metiers_) by Etienne Boileau, provost of the merchants in Paris (1258-1268), of "the tapicers or makers of _tapis sarrasinois_,[1] who say that their craft is for the service only of churches or great men like kings and nobles." In the 13th and 14th centuries Saracen weavers of rich and ornamental stuffs were also employed at Venice, which was a chief centre for importing Oriental goods, including carpets, and distributing them through western Europe. Dr Bode, in his _Vorderasiatische Knupfteppiche_, instances Oriental carpets with patterns mainly of geometric and angular forms represented in frescoes and other paintings by Domenico di Bartolo (1440), Niccolo di Buonaccorso (1450), Lippo Memmi (1480) and others.

Of greater interest perhaps, and especially as throwing light upon the trade, in, if not the making of, carpets in England somewhat in the method of contemporary Turkey carpets, is the specimen represented in Plate III. fig. 6. This may have been made in England, where foreign workmen, especially Flemings, were from early times often encouraged to settle in order to develop industries, amongst which pile carpet-making probably and tapestry-weaving certainly were included. The earliest record of tapestry-weaving works in England is that of William Sheldon's at Barcheston, Warwickshire, in 1509, and, besides wall hangings, carpets of tapestry-weaving were also possibly made there.[2] The cut pile carpet belonging to Lord Verulam (Plate III. fig. 6) was perhaps made at Norwich. It has a repeating and simply contrived continuous pattern of carnations and intertwining stems with a large lozenge in the centre bearing the royal arms of England with the letters E.R. (Elizabeth Regina) and the date 1570. It also has the arms of the borough of Ipswich and those of the family of Harbottle. The sequence or continuity of its border pattern fails in the corners at one end of the rug or carpet in a way very common to many Asia Minor and Spanish carpets (see Plate I. fig. 3, Plate II. fig. 4, and Plate IV. fig. 10); not, however, to the majority of Persian carpets (see Plate III. fig. 7, and Plate IV. fig. 8). A large cut pile carpet in the Victoria and Albert Museum has a repeating pattern of star devices, rather Moorish in style, with the inscription on one end of the border, "Feare God and Keep His Commandments, made in the yeare 1603," and in the field the shield of arms of Sir Edward Apsley of Thakeham, Sussex, impaling those of his wife, Elizabeth Elmes of Lifford, Northamptonshire. This may have been made in England. A carpet of very similar design, especially in its border, is to be seen in a painting by Marc Gheeraedts of the conference at old Somerset House of English and Spanish plenipotentiaries (1604), now in the National Portrait Gallery, London. A more important and finer carpet belongs to the Girdlers' Company (Plate IV. fig. 8), and is of Persian design, into which are introduced the arms of the company, shields with eagles, and white panels with English letters, the monogram of Robert Bell the master in 1634, but this was made at Lahore[3] to his order.

Spanish carpets.

Before dealing with later phases of the carpet industry in England, mention may now be made of Spanish carpets, of European as distinct from Saracenic or Persian design; the making of them dates at least from the end of the 15th century or the beginning of the 16th century. It is only within recent years that specimens of them have been obtained for public collections, and at present little is known of the factories in Spain whence they came. A large and most interesting series is shown in the Victoria and Albert Museum, and a portion of one of the earlier of the Spanish cut pile carpets in that museum is given in Plate IV. fig. 10. The inner repeating pattern has suggestions of a lingering Moorish influence, but a superior version of it with better definition is to be seen in extant bits of Spanish shuttle-woven silks of the 16th century. The border of distorted dragon-like creatures is of a Renaissance style, and this style is more pronounced in other Spanish carpets having borders of poorly treated Italian 16th-century pilaster ornament. Beside cut pile, many Spanish carpets of the 17th and 18th centuries have looped and flat surfaces, and bear Spanish names and inscriptions; many too are of needlework in tent or cross stitch.

Polish carpets

Another interesting class of very fine pile carpets that has also become known comparatively recently to collectors is the so-called Polish carpets, generally made of silk pile for the ornament, which is distinctively Oriental, and of gold and silver thread textile for the ground, very much after the manner of early 17th-century Brusa fabrics. Many of these carpets are in the Czartoryski collection at Cracow. They are discussed by Dr Bode in his treatise on Oriental carpets already referred to. European coats of arms of the persons for whom they were made are often introduced into them, sometimes different in workmanship from that of the carpets, though there are specimens in which the workmanship is the same throughout. The details of their designs consist for the most part of arabesques and long curved serrated leaves similar to such as are commonly used in Rhodian pottery decoration of the 16th century, though more typical of those so frequent in 17th-century Turkish ornament. Various considerations lead to the conclusion that these so-called Polish carpets were probably made in either Constantinople or Damascus (_tapete Damaschini_ frequently occur in Venetian inventories of the 16th century) rather than, as has been thought, by the Persian workmen employed at the Mazarski silk factory which lasted for a short period only during the 18th century at Sleucz in Poland.

Carpets made in France.

The European carpet manufactory, of which a continuous history for some two hundred and fifty years is recorded with exceptional completeness, is that which has been maintained under successive regimes, royal, imperial and republican, in France--at the Hotel des Gobelins in Paris. Seventy years before its organization under Colbert in 1667 as a state manufactory (_Manufacture Royale des Meubles de la Couronne_), Henry IV. had founded royal art workshops for all sorts of decorative work, at the Louvre; and here in 1604 a workroom was established for making Oriental carpets by the side of that which existed for making _tapis flamands_. In 1610 letters patent were granted to the Sieur Fortier, who has been reputed to be the first inventor in France of the art of making in silk and wool real Turkey and other piled carpets with grounds of gold thread, which must have been sumptuous fabrics probably resembling the so-called Polish carpets of this date. Some ten years later it is recorded that Pierre Dupont and Simon Lourdet started a pile carpet (_tapis veloutes_) manufactory at Chaillot (Paris) in large premises which had been used for the manufacture of soap--whence the name of "Savonnerie." To this converted manufactory were transferred in 1631 the carpet-makers from the Louvre, and under the direct patronage of the crown it continued its operations for many years at Chaillot. It was not until 1828 that the making of _tapis de la Savonnerie_ (pile carpets of a fine velvety character) was transferred to the Hotel des Gobelins. Here, in contradistinction to the Savonnerie, carpets are made others which, like those of Beauvais (where a manufactory of hangings and carpets was established by Colbert in 1664), are _tapis ras_ or non-piled carpets, being of tapestry-weaving, as also are those made by old-established firms at Aubusson and at Felletin, where the manufacture was flourishing, at the former place in 1732 and at the latter in 1737.

Returning now to England, there are evidences towards the end of the 17th century, if not earlier, that Walloon and Flemish makers of Turkey pile carpets had settled and set up works in different parts of the country. A protective charter, for instance, was granted in 1701 by William III. to weavers in Axminster and Wilton. The ultimate celebrity of the pile carpet industry at Wilton was due mainly to the interest taken in it during the earlier part of the 18th century by Henry, earl of Pembroke and Montgomery, who in the course of his travels abroad collected certain French and Walloon carpet-makers to work for him in Wiltshire--over them he put two Frenchmen, Antoine Dufossy and Pierre Jemale. More notable, however, than these is Pere Norbert, who naturalized himself as an Englishman, changed his name to Parisot, and started a manufactory of pile carpets and a training school in the craft at Fulham about 1751. In 1753 he wrote and published "An account of the new manufactory of Tapestry after the manner of that at the Gobelins, and of carpets after the manner of that at Chaillot (i.e. Savonnerie) now undertaken at Fulham by Mr Peter Parisot." Two refugee French carpet-makers from the Savonnerie had arrived in London in 1750, and started weaving a specimen carpet in Westminster. Parisot, having found them out, induced the duke of Cumberland to furnish funds for their removal to better workrooms at Paddington. The carpet when finished was presented by the duke to the princess dowager of Wales. Parisot quarrelled with his two employees, enticed others to come over, and then removed the carpet works from Paddington to Fulham. A worker, J. Baptiste Grignon, writing to "Mr Parisot in Foulleme Manufactory," mentions the marked preference "shown by the English court for velvet," and how much a "chair-back he had worked in the manner of the Savonnerie had been admired." Correspondence published in the _Nouvelles Archives de l'art francais_ (1878) largely relates to the efforts of the French government to stop the emigration to England of workers from the Gobelins and the Savonnerie. Parisot's Fulham works were sold up in 1755. He then tried to start a manufactory at Exeter, but apparently without success, as in 1756 his Exeter stock was sold in the Great Piazza auction rooms, Covent Garden. Joseph Baretti (Dr Johnson's friend), writing from Plymouth on the 18th of April 1760, alludes to his having that morning visited the Exeter manufactory of _tapisseries de Gobelins_ "founded by a distinguished anti-Jesuit--the renowned Father Nobert." Previously to this a Mr Passavant of Exeter[4] had received in 1758 a premium from the Society of Arts of London for making a carpet in "imitation of those brought from the East and called Turky carpets." Similar premiums had been awarded by the society in 1757 to a Mr Moore of Chiswell Street, Moorfields, and to a Mr Whitty of Axminster. In 1759 a society's premium was won by Mr Jeffer of Frome. In the _Transactions of the Society_, vol. i., dated 1783, it is stated that by their rewards, the manufacture of "Turky carpets is now established in different parts of the kingdom, and brought to a degree of elegance and beauty which the Turky carpets never attained." Such records as these convey a fair notion of the sporadic attempts which immediately preceded a systematic manufacture of pile carpets in this country. Whilst the Wilton industry survived, that actually carried on at Axminster died towards the end of the 18th century, and the name of Axminster like that of Savonnerie carpets now perpetuates the memory of a locally deceased manufactory, much as in a parallel way Brussels carpets seem to owe their name to the renown of Brussels as an important centre in the 15th and 16th centuries for tapestry-weaving.

Modern machinery.

Before the existence of steam-driven carpet-making machinery in England, employers, following the example set by the French, applied the Jacquard apparatus, for regulating and facilitating the weaving of patterns, to the hand manufacture of carpets. This was early in the 19th century; a great acceleration in producing English carpets occurred, severely threatening the industry as pursued (largely for _tapis ras_) at Tournai in Belgium, at Nimes, Abbeville, Aubusson, Beauvais, Tourcoing and Lannoy in France. The severity of the competition, however, was still more increased when English enterprise, developing the inventions of Erastus B. Bigelow (1814-1879) of America and Mr William Wood of England, took the lead in perfecting Jacquard weaving carpet looms worked by steam, which resulted in the setting up of many power-loom carpet manufactories in the United Kingdom. It was not until 1880 that French pile carpet manufacturers began to adopt similar carpet power-looms, importing them from England.

These machines for weaving pile carpets, either looped (_boucle_) as in Brussels, or cut (_veloute_) as in Wilton or Axminster carpets, were similar in all respects to such as had been in use by the important English manufacturers--Crossley of Halifax, Templeton of Glasgow, Humphreys of Kidderminster, Southwell of Bridgnorth, and others. A so-called tapestry carpet weaving-loom was invented by Richard Whytock of Edinburgh in 1832, but it was not brought to sufficient completeness for sustained manufacture until 1855. The essential feature of Mr Whytock's process was that the warp-threads were dyed and

## parti-coloured, in such a way that when woven the several points of

colour formed the pattern of the whole fabric. Although the name "tapestry" is used, the texture of these wares has but a remote likeness to that of hand-made tapestry hangings and carpets such as those of the Gobelins and Aubusson manufactories, nor is it the same as the texture of Brussels carpets. Machine-made tapestry carpets are also called "ingrain" carpets, because the wool or worsted is dyed in the grain, i.e. before manufacture. Germany in her manufacture of carpets resorts chiefly to the "ingrain" process, but in common with Holland and Belgium she produces pile (looped and cut) carpets from power-looms. In the United States of America there are many similar and very important carpet manufactories; and Austria produces fine cut pile carpets (_veloutes_), the designs of which are largely derived from those of the Aubusson tapestry-woven carpets (_tapis ras_).

Lengths or pieces of felt and other substantial material are frequently made for floor and stair carpeting, and are often printed with patterns. These of course come into quite another class technically. The technological aspects of the several branches of carpet manufacture by machinery are treated in the articles on TEXTILE-PRINTING and WEAVING. Briefly, the products of carpet manufacture practically fall into three main divisions: (1) Pile carpets (_tapis moquettes_) which are either looped (_boucle_) or cut (_veloute_); (2) flat surface carpets (_tapis ras_) as in hand tapestry-woven material; and (3) printed stuffs used for carpeting.

Modern hand-made carpets.

Whilst the production of carpets by steam power predominates in Europe and the United States of America, and at one time appeared to be giving the _coup de grace_ to the craft of making carpets by hand, there has been in recent times a revival in this latter, and many carpets of characteristic modern design, several of them made in England, are due to the influence of the late William Morris, who devoted much of his varied energies to tapestry weaving and pile carpet weaving by hand, both of which crafts are being fostered as cottage industries in parts of Ireland, as well as in England. At the same time leading English carpet manufactures continue to produce hand-made carpets as occasion requires. In France a much more systematic existence of tapestry weaving and pile carpet making by hand has been maintained and is of course attributable to the perennial activity of the state tapestry works in Paris (at the Gobelins workshops) and in Beauvais, and of corresponding works managed by private enterprise at Aubusson and elsewhere.

Designing patterns for English carpet manufacture is now more organized than it was, and greater thought and invention are given to devising ornament suitable to the purpose of floor coverings. Before 1850 and for a few years later, rather rude realistic representations of animals and botanical forms (decadent versions of Savonnerie designs) were often wrought in rugs and carpets, and survivals of these are still to be met with, but the lessons that have been subsequently derived from intelligent study of Oriental designs have resulted in the definite designing of conventional forms for surface patterns. The early movement in this direction owes much to the teaching of Owen Jones, and in its later and rather freer phases the Morris influence has been powerful. Schools of art at Glasgow, at Manchester, Birmingham and elsewhere in the United Kingdom have trained and continue to train designers, whose work has contributed to the formation of an English style with a new note, which, as a French writer puts it, has created a sensation in France, in Germany, in fact in all Europe and America.

France retains that facility of execution and liveliness in invention which have been nurtured for over three hundred years by systematic, governmental solicitude for education in decorative design and enterprise in perfecting manufacture. Her Aubusson and Savonnerie carpets have maintained a style of design in form and colour entirely different from any that clearly throws back to Oriental principles, and many of the designs for the finer and larger of these carpets are schemed with large central oval panels, garlands of flowers and fantastic frames very much on the plan of what is frequently to be seen in the decoration of ceilings. At the same time the style called _l'art nouveau_ has become developed. It largely grows from very fanciful dispositions of free-growing natural forms, as well as curiously curved and tenuous forms, many of which are bone-like and fibre-like in character, flat in treatment and rather thin and washy in colour, and its influence has slightly percolated into designs for pile carpets. This style, sometimes intermixed with the more robust, less fantastic and rather fuller-coloured English style, has found followers in England, America and Germany, but the bulk of the designs now used in power carpet looms seems to be mainly of Oriental descent.

The more important art museums in Europe contain collections of Oriental carpets, and the history of many is fairly well established. The subject has become one of serious study, the results of which have been published and elucidated by means of well-executed coloured reproductions of carpets and rugs preserved in both public and private collections.

PLATE III.

[Illustration: FIG. 6.--CUT PILE WORSTED CARPET, BEARING ROYAL ARMS OF ENGLAND WITH E.R. (ELIZABETH REGINA); DATE 1570.]

[Illustration: FIG. 7.--VERY FINE CUT PILE PERSIAN CARPET KNOWN AS THE HOLY CARPET OF THE MOSQUE AT ARDEBIL.]

PLATE IV.

[Illustration: FIG. 8.--FINE CUT PILE LAHORE CARPET (c. 1664) BELONGING TO GIRDLERS' COMPANY IN LONDON. OF PERSIAN DESIGN.]

[Illustration: FIG. 9.--CORNER OF A CUT PILE CARPET OF PERSIAN MANUFACTURE, 16TH CENTURY.]

[Illustration: FIG. 10.--CUT PILE CARPET OF SPANISH MANUFACTURE, EARLY 16TH CENTURY.]