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. 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.
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 was previously possible, and also allowed a cheaper fabric to be produced. After initial opposition, the process was developed in Scotland; and finally, about the year 1842, Halifax became the centre of the Tapestry weaving. Firms in other towns were licensed, and the process was so widely taken up that in 1850 there were 1,299 Tapestry hand-looms at work in England and Scotland, as against 2,500 hand Brussels looms. The other notable invention was that of Mr. James Templeton, of Glasgow, who in 1839 patented a novel device for the manufacture of patent Axminster carpets by a two-fold process. This also admitted of a large range of shades. The invention has since been considerably developed, and has contributed largely to the extension of the carpet industry.
From small beginnings, early in the nineteenth century the manufacture of carpets had grown in the course of 50 years to an important industry in the United States, and was well established in Philadelphia and other centres. Both in England and America the most able inventors had turned their attention to the problem of weaving by power. Mr. Collier, who had been successful in weaving linen by power, produced, in conjunction with Messrs. Crossley, of Halifax, a loom for the weaving of Tapestry and Brussels. The problem had, however, been solved by Mr. E. P. Bigelow, in America, and the Bigelow patent was acquired by Messrs. Crossley. The introduction of the power-loom created a great change in the industry. The transition period from hand-weaving to power-weaving was a period of anxiety to manufacturers and of privation to the old hand-loom weavers; but the situation was everywhere faced, and from the first introduction of power-loom weaving ever-increasing quantities of carpets have been woven, both for home consumption and for export. In the seventies of the last century another step forward was the remarkable invention of the Moquette or Royal Axminster loom by Alexander Smith & Sons, of Yonkers, N.Y. This loom was introduced to England by Messrs. Tomkinson & Adam, of Kidderminster; and the invention has caused a still further extension of the carpet trade both at home and abroad.
CHAPTER II
MATERIALS
Carpet manufacture is a complicated matter, and involves the use both of various ingenious machines and of a diversity of materials, such as wool, cotton, jute, twine, oil, paper, wire, colours, size, etc. We need only concern ourselves, however, with the more important of these materials, which are yarns made of wool, in the form of worsted or woollen, which are almost invariably used for the surface of a carpet; and yarns made of other fibres, which are used for warp and weft.
The wool used for carpet yarns is different from that required for either cloth or hosiery. It need not be so fine and soft, but it should be strong, and in the case of worsted yarn, of fairly long staple, while natural lustre adds to the value.