Carpets

CARPETS

CHAPTER I

HISTORY

BEFORE the mechanical processes involved in the manufacture of carpets to-day are described, a short sketch of the history of the fabric and the story of its introduction into this country may be of interest. The origin of the weaver’s loom, like that of the potter’s wheel, dates back to the prehistoric times. A loom with its workers is shown in an ancient Egyptian fresco, the date of which is reckoned by antiquarians to be about 3,000 years before the Christian Era. In the grottoes of Benihassan, both spinners and weavers are shown, the weavers working on cloths both plain and of a checked pattern; and both perpendicular and horizontal looms are represented. There were, however, other civilizations beside the Egyptian; and the origin of the carpet must be sought still further to the East, in places where, in spite of the ebb and flow of conquests, it is still made at the present day.

Mention is frequently found in ancient records of history of rich hangings, coverings, fine cloths, and tapestries, generally the booty of some conqueror; but it is difficult to tell whether some fabric used exclusively as the carpet of to-day is used is included in these lists. The ancient equivalent of the modern carpet or rug was known to the Babylonians, who were, according to Pliny, skilful weavers; and its manufacture was carried on at an early date among the Assyrians and Persians, in China and India, and among the Arabs.

The original purpose of the carpet in the East was probably the same in the beginning as it is there, now, at the present day. It was used to give colour to the temple, as a hanging for the tents, a trapping for the saddle, a sitting place for the guest, or for a covering of the ground on which to sleep or pray; and its manufacture in any district implied a certain degree of civilization and luxury.

The use of a woven floor-covering seems to be indicated in passages in Homer; and the well-known authority, Sir George Birdwood, cites an account of a banquet given at Alexandria in the third century before the Christian Era by Ptolemy Philadelphus, at which Persian rugs were spread in the King’s tent. Persian carpets were highly valued, and were exported to Greece, and at a later date to Rome. Themistocles, according to Plutarch, likened a man’s discourse to a rich Persian carpet, the beautiful figures and patterns of which can be shown only by spreading and extending it out; when it is contracted and folded up, they are obscured and lost.

The conquests of Alexander the Great, which extended as far as India, seem to have made the use of the products of the Eastern looms familiar among the Greeks. At a later date the conquests made by the Roman Consuls spread the arts of the East still farther into Europe. At a later period still the taking of Constantinople by the Turks drove many skilful artificers to take up their residence in Italy, at Venice, Genoa, and Florence, and at some towns in France; and from these centres carpets were still farther distributed over Europe.

The Crusades brought England into touch with the East; and specimens of carpet were probably introduced by returning knights and their followers; but it is through Spain, a country which acquired the art from the Moors, that they are first known to have come, Queen Eleanor of Castile and her suite introducing them into this country on her marriage to Edward I. Illustrations of carpets are shown in pictures of the time of Henry VIII; and in the time of Elizabeth they were probably in more general use in England than most writers on the subject are accustomed to allow; for direct communication with the East had been opened up by the fearless and enterprising traders and adventurers of those times. In Hakluyt’s Voyages there are the following instructions to a trader about to journey to Persia—

In Persia you shall finde carpets of course thrummed wooll, the best of the world, and excellently coloured; those cities and townes you must repaire to, and you must use meanes to learne all the order of the dying of those thrummes, which are so died as neither raine, wine, nor yet vinegar can staine; and if you may attaine to that cunning you shall not need to feare dying of clothe. For if the colour holde in yarne and thrumme, it will holde much better in cloth. Learne you there to fixe and make sure the colour to be given by logge wood; so shall we not need to buy wood so deare to the enriching of our enemies. Enquire the price of leckar, and all other things belonging to dying. If before you returne you could procure a single good workeman in the arte of Turkish carpet making you should bringe the arte into this Realme, and also thereby increase worke to your company.

Hakluyt’s praise of the Persian carpets was not undeserved, for their manufacture in his time had reached a period of excellence as regards design and workmanship which it has been from time to time the aim of modern manufacturers to reproduce, as far as the conditions and requirements of the present day permit. Many of the best specimens in the museums and collections of New York, London, Vienna, and Paris are attributed to the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. When Hakluyt wrote there was in existence a carpet at the Mosque of Ardebil, in North-West Persia, which is now in the Victoria and Albert Museum. The date of this carpet is 1540, and experts agree that it belongs to the best period of Persian carpet weaving.

There is, unfortunately, no record whether the efforts of Hakluyt and the merchant adventurers of his time to obtain weavers from Turkey or Persia were successful. Carpets do not find a place among the goods to be especially sought after by their agents. As far back as the reign of Henry VIII we read of Cardinal Wolsey obtaining carpets through the Venetian Ambassador; and in that reign Richard Sheldon lent his house to a weaver named Richard Hicks, who produced among other fabrics woven maps of Worcestershire and Oxfordshire, specimens of which are still in existence.

Kidderminster has been connected with weaving from the earliest times, and cloth weaving was done as far back as 1235, and a little later, fulling. Wool was abundant in England, and the cloth trade was well established in the early part of the XIVth century, strengthened by the influx of the Flemish weavers.

The Charter of King Charles I to Kidderminster states that Kidderminster is an ancient borough of great commerce for the working and manufacture of cloths. In 1667, the number of looms in the town was 417. There were 157 master-weavers, 187 journeymen, and 115 apprentices. The number of master weavers seems relatively large: they were probably working in a small way, financing two or three looms each.

In France, Henry IV gave assistance for the manufacture of carpets, and in 1604 there was a strong guild of carpet weavers; but it was not until the reign of Louis XIV that the manufacture was revived at Aubusson and established at Beauvais. The industry had the direct patronage of the French King, and some celebrated fabrics were made. The Revocation, in 1685, of the Edict of Nantes, which for a time had given protection to the Protestants of France, drove a large number of French and Walloon artisans into England and Germany; and the spinning and weaving were among the many industries in this country to be benefited by this influx of skilful workers.

In 1701 the carpet weavers of Wilton and Axminster received a charter; but even at an earlier date the manufacture of carpets had been carried on at these places. Both these towns have given their names to distinct fabrics that are now made in many places and countries. Carpet manufacture is no longer carried on at Axminster, where it flourished for about a century; and other places, like Fulham, Moorfields, Exeter, and Frome, where early attempts were made to establish the industry, have long ceased to have any connection with carpet making.

About the year 1740 the Earl of Pembroke brought over weavers from France and introduced into Wilton the making of loop-pile or Brussels carpeting. This was followed in due course by the development of the cut-pile fabric which took its name from the place.

About the year 1736 the weaving of carpets seems to have been established at Kidderminster, a town which had been connected with the weaving of broadcloth and flowered stuff from as far back as the reign of Henry VIII. When the art was first introduced, what is now called Scotch or Kidderminster carpet was made on the old hand-loom; the process of weaving was slow and laborious, and required a man and a boy to each loom. In 1745 Mr. Broom started the manufacture of Wilton and Brussels carpets in the town, bringing over weavers from Tournai. In 1772 the number of carpet looms in the town was 250, and the trade extended to other places in the North of England and Scotland. But at this date the silk and worsted weaving industry was still of greater importance in Kidderminster than the carpet trade, as there were 1,700 weavers and 29 master-weavers engaged therein. The work was done at the weavers’ homes, the looms being mostly in the attics. In 1830 there were nearly 1,100 looms in Kidderminster, and a considerable home and foreign trade had been established. A Parliamentary Paper of that date gave the consumption of wool in the weaving of carpets as one twenty-eighth of the whole quantity of wool produced in the Kingdom.

In 1757 Mr. Thomas Moore started the manufacture of carpets in London, and obtained a premium from the Society of Arts for the best imitation of Turkey carpets.

As far back as 1778 there was a trade to some extent at Kilmarnock. The original fabric was the two-ply Scotch or Kidderminster carpet. In 1824 an engineer of Kilmarnock introduced the three-ply Scotch carpet, a fabric of three layers of different colours, each of which is brought to the surface according to design; while about the same time Brussels and Velvet pile were also introduced into Scotland. In 1831 the Trustees for Manufactures in Scotland awarded the prize for four Turkey carpets, the first of that type made in Scotland.

There was keen rivalry between the Brussels and Wilton fabrics; but both flourished, and in Kidderminster, by the year 1825, nearly all weaving, except that of carpets, seems to have been discontinued.

There was a severe strike in Kidderminster in 1828, arising from a reduction of wages caused by Scottish competition; and again in 1830, when there was rioting, in which the damage to property was estimated at £3,000.

In the last quarter of the eighteenth century the inventions of Arkwright had been applied to the woollen and worsted industries. Boulton and Watts had put their steam engine on a practical footing, while Cartwright had made a power-loom for the weaving of calico, and had also patented a wool-combing machine. In France, Jacquard was perfecting a device which, when adapted to the carpet loom, was to play an important part in the development of the industry.

From the beginning of the nineteenth century, progress, in spite of occasional checks due to general economic conditions, was well maintained; and by the year 1825 the Jacquard mechanism was beginning to replace, both in England and Scotland, the old and complicated harness of the hand-loom. A great increase of trade followed its adoption.

Two other important inventions, which had a great influence in extending the scope of the trade, were developed in the thirties of the last century. The one was the development of the Tapestry process of printing and weaving carpets by Mr. Whytock, of Edinburgh and Glasgow. This process enabled a greater range of colours to be used than