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, for a covering of the ground on which to sleep or pray; and its manufacture in any district implied a certain degree of civilisation 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 further 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 further 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 Castille 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 most 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.
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.