Jacquard Weaving and Designing

by T. F. Bell

The Egyptian carpets may have been tapestries and embroidered fabrics. They also had a method of making tufted carpets by drawing a portion of the weft threads out of a piece of coarse linen and sewing tufts of coloured worsted to the warp threads, enough of the weft being left in to bind the warp threads together.

Fig. 175

Persian and Indian carpets were made of wool; the latter were occasionally made of silk, and sometimes an inferior description of carpet was made of cotton. These, as well as Turkey carpets, are made on a very simple loom consisting of two posts fitted at a suitable distance apart to form a vertical frame. There is a roller at the top and another at the bottom between which the warp threads are stretched, much in the same manner as in tapestry weaving. The weaver sits in front of the loom with a design before him, and is provided with a quantity of bobbins of the colours required for the pattern; he looks to the design for the colour, and, taking a bobbin of the colour required, forms a loop round two of the warp threads with the weft, cutting it off as shown in [Fig. 175]. After having completed a row along the cloth forming one weft line of the design, he opens a shed and inserts a ground shot all across the web, each ground shot going into a shed the reverse of the preceding one, forming a plain texture ground with a row of tufts between the ground shots. The ground shots are beaten down with a comb. Instead of going across in even rows of tufts, where there is a patch of colour several rows of tufts may be put in at this place with a ground thread between the rows, leaving the ends of these threads projecting so that they can be carried across when the remaining portions of the rows are completed. The ends of the tufts are cut off roughly at first, and afterwards shorn level with a pair of shears. Persian carpets are sometimes very costly, a small-sized carpet, when made of fine cashmere wool, costing 500l. or 600l.

Axminster carpets are made on the same principle, and other art carpets are being made similarly. There are about sixteen or twenty warp threads per inch of strong cotton or linen thread; the weft is of fine wool, three or four ply being put into each tuft; the ground weft is soft hemp or flax, eight ply of yarn going to each shot. This makes a full soft cloth. These carpets are about three-quarters of an inch thick, and, like tapestries, there is no end to the variety of pattern or colour that can be introduced.

Kidderminster or Scotch Carpet.—This carpet, also called ingrain carpet, is the oldest machine-made carpet in this country; it was originally made at Kidderminster, but the chief centre now is Scotland. Originally it was a two-ply cloth, the pattern being formed by passing the two cloths, which were of different colours, through each other. Mr. Morton, of Kilmarnock, improved on this by making it a three-ply cloth, which enabled it to be made a thicker cloth with a richer pattern. It is now made both two-and three-ply, and when made of all-wool is a rich and durable article, taking a position between the jute and felt carpets and the tapestry and Brussels; it is, however, sometimes made with cotton warps and woollen wefts, and is in this case an inferior article.

Both two-and three-ply carpets may be woven with only one colour of weft, in which case the pattern is formed by the warp threads, which must be much thicker so as to close in over the weft and hide it as much as possible; on the other hand, there may be two warps and four colours of weft, two of which are the same colours as the warp, and in this case the weft is much thicker than the warp. The best of these carpets are made with as many colours of weft as warp, as, in order to get a pure effect, it is necessary to have wefts traversing warps of their own colour; but a variety of effects can be produced by using additional colours in both warp and weft.

One advantage in this style of carpet is that it is reversible; for when one cloth rises to the face the other passes to the back, making the pattern on both back and face alike, but of different colours. This is the case when the carpet is two-ply cloth woven in the ordinary way, but sometimes the back has to a certain extent to be sacrificed to give more ornamentation to the face, at least in the ordinary method of weaving. Whether woven two- or three-ply, the principle of working is the same. Take a two-ply carpet. The fabric is a double or two-ply plain cloth, figured in the usual way by passing the two cloths through each other, there being no binding between the cloths except what is formed by the one passing through.

The warps are of different colours—as, say, scarlet and black, green and black, &c.—and each warp should have a weft of its own colour if pure effects in the cloth are required. Usually four sets of warp threads are employed instead of two—that is, two colours, end-and-end, for each warp—and each colour of warp has its own colour of weft. Say we take red and black for the face or figuring warp, and white and olive for the back or ground warp. Various effects can be produced from this arrangement—viz. the effect of the figuring cloth, formed by weaving the red and black warps and wefts together, which in plain texture with one weft will produce a rich brown effect; the ground cloth produced by the white and olive warps and the weft will be of a light olive colour; then lined, or what are known as ‘shot-about’ effects can be produced by throwing in a light and a dark shot alternately—as white and black, olive and red—and binding them on the face by warps of the same colour. All the weft on the face of the cloth should be bound by warp of its own colour in order to give pure effects. When a thread of one cloth is raised, the corresponding thread of the other cloth goes to the back (white and red and olive and black correspond in this case), but the red weft will be bound with black warp on the under side of the cloth, and the black weft will be bound with red warp, and the same with the others, as in the system of working the harness with journals to form the texture, all the black warp is controlled by one of the journals and must all rise with it. Therefore when the black shot is being thrown in, the black warp must be raised to make the pattern correct on the face of the cloth, and this will also cause it to be raised for that portion of the cloth that goes to the back, and when the black is up the red is down; therefore the black weft must be bound by red warp on the under side of the cloth, and the same with the other colours. It is easy to understand that if an end-and-end warp—black and red—be wrought plain on two shafts or leaves of heddles, and shot pick and pick of the same colours, when the black weft is bound with the black warp on one side it must be bound with red (which is the other half of the warp) on the other side, and if the red is bound with red on one side it must also be bound with black on the reverse side. To apply this to the double cloth or carpet weave it is only necessary to consider this piece of cloth as passing up and down through another one of a different colour. Had we the power of raising any portion of the black or red warps required, we could bind a portion of the black weft with black on one side, and any other portion of it with black on the other side; to do this we require a full or thread harness.