Two-tone effects of contrasted colours are not greatly used. They are sometimes employed in small designs, with two colours only, or three (one and a contrasting pair), but more often in bold designs of the Empire, Adam, or Wedgwood style, with three or four shades of one colour, upon a ground, or working against a pair of shades, of another; but effective combinations on these lines are rare.
By far the largest proportion of carpets made are multi-coloured; and nearly every style and fabric is adaptable to treatment in this way.
It is impossible to deal properly with the question of many-coloured carpets except at great length; but, as a basis, it may be useful to remember that there are only three primary colours, and that in every multi-coloured carpet there should be represented some red, some yellow, and some blue. That is not saying that these should be primaries. The red may be a terra-cotta, the yellow a tan, the blue a slate. But if you have forty shades in a carpet they can all (except, of course, black and white) be scientifically analysed into reds, yellows, and blues, even if some of them are secondaries or tertiaries. That is to say, that, according to its collocation, a purple will be acting either as a blue or as a red, a green either as a yellow or as a blue, and so on. It follows, therefore, that in practice the carpet designer or colourist who has a large range of colours at his disposal will arrange them in sets: a tan with a cream, three blues, two reds and a ruby, and so on.
From this point of view, the manufacturer of Wilton is not so hopelessly outclassed by the maker of Axminster and Chenille. With his five or six colours, irrespective of planting, he can produce an effect which is satisfying, and artistically perfect; though he may have to use one shade, where two or three would give additional softness and richness.
Much, however, depends on the nature of the design; and it is obvious that if it is desired to represent, say, a flower in a naturalistic manner, the fabric that commands a large number of colours, combined with a reasonably fine pitch, will come off best.
A dictum of that eminent art-critic, Owen Jones, may perhaps be appropriately quoted at this point. In a lecture on Decorative Art he writes—
“Carpets should be darker in tone and more broken in line than any portion of a room, both because they present the largest mass of colour, and because they serve as a background to the furniture placed upon them. As a general rule, lighter carpets may be used in rooms thinly furnished than the contrary, as we should otherwise have too overpowering a mass of shade.”
All ornament, according to the source and principle of its design, may be classified as either geometric, naturalistic, or conventional. Ornament of the first class consists of apparently arbitrary arrangements of circles, squares, spirals, or intersecting lines, or repetitions of simple figures. It is the natural form of expression of primitive art, as employed by savages or found on prehistoric remains; but it has been developed in some style, as, for example, the Moorish, into elaborate and beautiful patterns. Naturalistic ornament is that which is closely based upon natural objects, especially flowers and leaves, which are coloured as closely as the limitations of the material permit. Conventional ornament, which may probably be regarded as the highest class, is based upon observation of nature; but the natural forms are not slavishly copied, but conventionalised, in the sense of being selected and simplified, and adapted to the decorative purpose in view.
This classification holds good of carpet design, as for other domains of applied art; and it may be interesting to trace the development of the fashion of carpet decoration with this classification in view.
The geometric style is characteristic of the youthful days of British carpets, and was at its zenith in Early Victorian times. Designs of this class, rather elaborate than simple in drawing, were associated with bright and strongly contrasted colours, while black grounds, at once the most effective and the most difficult of all ground shades, were greatly in vogue. It is interesting to note that of late we have returned to the use of black, for many years an outlaw colour; though it is employed now in a more artistic manner than it was sixty years ago.