Another method of making carpets with a flat surface is that of tapestry-weaving (see Plate II. fig. 4), which, according to existing and well-authenticated specimens of considerable antiquity (already referred to), appears to be the oldest of any historic process of ornamental weaving (see [Tapestry]).
Very broadly considered, the traditional designs or patterns of Oriental carpets fall into two classes: the one, prevailing to a much larger extent than the other, seems to reflect the austerity of the Sunni or orthodox Mahommedans Motives in traditional designs in Oriental carpets. in making patterns with abstract geometric and angular forms, stiff interlacing devices, cryptic signs and symbols and the like; whilst the other suggests the freer thought of the Shiah or unorthodox sect, in designs of ingenious blossom and leafy scrolls, conventional arabesques, botanical and animal forms, and cartouches enclosing Kufic inscriptions (see the splendid example known as the Ardebil carpet, Plate III. fig. 7, and another in Plate IV. fig. 9). Types of the more austere design occur in carpets from Afghanistan, Turkestan, Bokhara and Asia Minor, N.W. India and even Morocco, the other types of freer design being almost special to Persian rugs and carpets.
Next in historic importance to Persia, Turkestan and Asia Minor is India, where the making of cut pile carpets—known as Kalin and Kalicha—was presumably introduced by the Mahommedans during the latter part of the Indian Carpets. 14th century. But the industry did not apparently attain importance until after the founding of the Mogul dynasty by Baber early in the 16th century. The designs mainly derived from those of Persian carpets of that period do not as a rule rise to the excellence of their prototypes. Historical centres of Indian carpet making are in Kashmir, the Punjab and Sind, and at Agra, Mirzapur, Jubbulpore, Warangal in the Deccan, Malabar and Masulipatam. Velvets are richly embroidered in gold and silver thread at Benares and Murshidabad and used as ceremonial carpets, and silk pile carpets are made at Tanjore and Salem. For the most part the best of the Indian woollen pile carpets have been produced by workers of repute engaged by princes, great nobles and wealthy persons to carry on the craft in their dwellings and palaces. These groups of highly skilled workers as part of the household staff were paid fixed salaries, but they were also allowed to execute private orders. During the 19th century the carpet industry was developed in government gaols. Produced in great quantities the prison-made carpets as a rule are less well turned out, and the competition, set up between them and the rugs and carpets of private factories has had a somewhat detrimental effect upon the industry generally. Older in origin than the cut pile carpets are those of thinner and flat surface texture, which from almost immemorial times have been woven in cotton with blue and white or blue and red stripes in the simplest way. These are called daris and satranjis, and are made chiefly in Benares and northern India. They are also made in the south and by such aborigines retaining primitive habits as the Todas of the Nilgiri Hills, a fact which points to the age of this particular method of making ground or floor coverings.
A condition that has always controlled the designs of Oriental carpets is their rectangular shape, more often oblong than square. As a rule, there is a well-schemed border, enclosing the main portion or field over which the Condition controlling designs of Oriental Carpets. details of the pattern are symmetrically distributed. Simpler patterns in the field of a carpet or rug consist of repetitions of the same device or of a small number of different devices (see Plate II. fig. 4). Richer patterns display more organic pattern in the construction, of which the leading and continuous features are expressed as diversified bands, scrolls and curved stems; amongst these latter are very varied devices which play either predominant or subordinate parts in the whole effect of the design (Plate III. fig. 7). Angular and simplified treatments of these elaborate designs are rendered in many Asia Minor or Turkey carpets (Plate I. fig. 3); but the typical flowing and more graceful versions are of Persian origin (see Plate III. fig. 7, and Plate IV. fig. 9), usually of the 16th century. Mingled in such intricate stem designs or “arabesques” are details many of which have been derived on the one hand from Sassanian and even from far earlier Mesopotamian emblematical ornament based on cheetahs seizing gazelles, on floral forms, blossoms and buds so well conventionalized in Assyrian decoration, and on the other hand from Tatar and Chinese sources. The style, strong in suggestion of successive historical periods, seems to have been matured in Mosil engraved and damascened metal work of the 12th and 13th centuries before its occurrence in Persian carpet designs, the finest of which were produced about the reign of Shah Abbas. A good deal earlier than this period are carpets designed chiefly according to the simpler taste of the Sunnites, and such as these appear to be mentioned by Marco Polo (1256-1323) when writing that “in Turcomania they weave the handsomest carpets in the world.” He quotes Conia (Konieh in Anatolia), Savast (Sivas in Asia Minor), some 300 m. north-east of Konieh, and Cassaria (Kaisaria or Caesaraea in Anatolia) as the chief weaving centres. It is the carpets from such places rather than from Persia that appear to have been the first Oriental ones known in European countries.
Entries of Oriental carpets are frequent in the inventories of European cathedral treasures. In England, for instance, carpets are said to have been first employed by Queen Eleanor of Castile and her suite during the latter part of the Carpets in Europe. 13th century, who had them from Spain, where their manufacture was apparently carried on by Saracens or Moors in the southern part of the country. On the other hand, Pierre Dupont, a master carpet-maker of the Savonnerie (see below), gives his opinion in 1632 that the introduction of carpet-making into France was due to the Saracens after their defeat by Charles Martel in a.d. 726. But more historically precise is the record in the book of crafts (Livre des métiers) by Etienne Boileau, provost of the merchants in Paris (1258-1268), of “the tapicers or makers of tapis sarrasinois,[1] who say that their craft is for the service only of churches or great men like kings and nobles.” In the 13th and 14th centuries Saracen weavers of rich and ornamental stuffs were also employed at Venice, which was a chief centre for importing Oriental goods, including carpets, and distributing them through western Europe. Dr Bode, in his Vorderasiatische Knüpfteppiche, instances Oriental carpets with patterns mainly of geometric and angular forms represented in frescoes and other paintings by Domenico di Bartolo (1440), Niccolo di Buonaccorso (1450), Lippo Memmi (1480) and others.
Of greater interest perhaps, and especially as throwing light upon the trade, in, if not the making of, carpets in England somewhat in the method of contemporary Turkey carpets, is the specimen represented in Plate III. fig. 6. This may have been made in England, where foreign workmen, especially Flemings, were from early times often encouraged to settle in order to develop industries, amongst which pile carpet-making probably and tapestry-weaving certainly were included. The earliest record of tapestry-weaving works in England is that of William Sheldon’s at Barcheston, Warwickshire, in 1509, and, besides wall hangings, carpets of tapestry-weaving were also possibly made there.[2] The cut pile carpet belonging to Lord Verulam (Plate III. fig. 6) was perhaps made at Norwich. It has a repeating and simply contrived continuous pattern of carnations and intertwining stems with a large lozenge in the centre bearing the royal arms of England with the letters E.R. (Elizabeth Regina) and the date 1570. It also has the arms of the borough of Ipswich and those of the family of Harbottle. The sequence or continuity of its border pattern fails in the corners at one end of the rug or carpet in a way very common to many Asia Minor and Spanish carpets (see Plate I. fig. 3, Plate II. fig. 4, and Plate IV. fig. 10); not, however, to the majority of Persian carpets (see Plate III. fig. 7, and Plate IV. fig. 8). A large cut pile carpet in the Victoria and Albert Museum has a repeating pattern of star devices, rather Moorish in style, with the inscription on one end of the border, “Feare God and Keep His Commandments, made in the yeare 1603,” and in the field the shield of arms of Sir Edward Apsley of Thakeham, Sussex, impaling those of his wife, Elizabeth Elmes of Lifford, Northamptonshire. This may have been made in England. A carpet of very similar design, especially in its border, is to be seen in a painting by Marc Gheeraedts of the conference at old Somerset House of English and Spanish plenipotentiaries (1604), now in the National Portrait Gallery, London. A more important and finer carpet belongs to the Girdlers’ Company (Plate IV. fig. 8), and is of Persian design, into which are introduced the arms of the company, shields with eagles, and white panels with English letters, the monogram of Robert Bell the master in 1634, but this was made at Lahore[3] to his order.
Before dealing with later phases of the carpet industry in England, mention may now be made of Spanish carpets, of European as distinct from Saracenic or Persian design; the making of them dates at least from the Spanish carpets. end of the 15th century or the beginning of the 16th century. It is only within recent years that specimens of them have been obtained for public collections, and at present little is known of the factories in Spain whence they came. A large and most interesting series is shown in the Victoria and Albert Museum, and a portion of one of the earlier of the Spanish cut pile carpets in that museum is given in Plate IV. fig. 10. The inner repeating pattern has suggestions of a lingering Moorish influence, but a superior version of it with better definition is to be seen in extant bits of Spanish shuttle-woven silks of the 16th century. The border of distorted dragon-like creatures is of a Renaissance style, and this style is more pronounced in other Spanish carpets having borders of poorly treated Italian 16th-century pilaster ornament. Beside cut pile, many Spanish carpets of the 17th and 18th centuries have looped and flat surfaces, and bear Spanish names and inscriptions; many too are of needlework in tent or cross stitch.
Another interesting class of very fine pile carpets that has also become known comparatively recently to collectors is the so-called Polish carpets, generally made of silk pile for the ornament, which is distinctively Oriental, and of Polish carpets gold and silver thread textile for the ground, very much after the manner of early 17th-century Brusa fabrics. Many of these carpets are in the Czartoryski collection at Cracow. They are discussed by Dr Bode in his treatise on Oriental carpets already referred to. European coats of arms of the persons for whom they were made are often introduced into them, sometimes different in workmanship from that of the carpets, though there are specimens in which the workmanship is the same throughout. The details of their designs consist for the most part of arabesques and long curved serrated leaves similar to such as are commonly used in Rhodian pottery decoration of the 16th century, though more typical of those so frequent in 17th-century Turkish ornament. Various considerations lead to the conclusion that these so-called Polish carpets were probably made in either Constantinople or Damascus (tapete Damaschini frequently occur in Venetian inventories of the 16th century) rather than, as has been thought, by the Persian workmen employed at the Mazarski silk factory which lasted for a short period only during the 18th century at Sleucz in Poland.
The European carpet manufactory, of which a continuous history for some two hundred and fifty years is recorded with exceptional completeness, is that which has been maintained under successive regimes, royal, imperial Carpets made in France. and republican, in France—at the Hotel des Gobelins in Paris. Seventy years before its organization under Colbert in 1667 as a state manufactory (Manufacture Royale des Meubles de la Couronne), Henry IV. had founded royal art workshops for all sorts of decorative work, at the Louvre; and here in 1604 a workroom was established for making Oriental carpets by the side of that which existed for making tapis flamands. In 1610 letters patent were granted to the Sieur Fortier, who has been reputed to be the first inventor in France of the art of making in silk and wool real Turkey and other piled carpets with grounds of gold thread, which must have been sumptuous fabrics probably resembling the so-called Polish carpets of this date. Some ten years later it is recorded that Pierre Dupont and Simon Lourdet started a pile carpet (tapis veloutés) manufactory at Chaillot (Paris) in large premises which had been used for the manufacture of soap—whence the name of “Savonnerie.” To this converted manufactory were transferred in 1631 the carpet-makers from the Louvre, and under the direct patronage of the crown it continued its operations for many years at Chaillot. It was not until 1828 that the making of tapis de la Savonnerie (pile carpets of a fine velvety character) was transferred to the Hôtel des Gobelins. Here, in contradistinction to the Savonnerie, carpets are made others which, like those of Beauvais (where a manufactory of hangings and carpets was established by Colbert in 1664), are tapis ras or non-piled carpets, being of tapestry-weaving, as also are those made by old-established firms at Aubusson and at Felletin, where the manufacture was flourishing, at the former place in 1732 and at the latter in 1737.
Returning now to England, there are evidences towards the end of the 17th century, if not earlier, that Walloon and Flemish makers of Turkey pile carpets had settled and set up works in different parts of the country. A protective charter, for instance, was granted in 1701 by William III. to weavers in Axminster and Wilton. The ultimate celebrity of the pile carpet industry at Wilton was due mainly to the interest taken in it during the earlier part of the 18th century by Henry, earl of Pembroke and Montgomery, who in the course of his travels abroad collected certain French and Walloon carpet-makers to work for him in Wiltshire—over them he put two Frenchmen, Antoine Dufossy and Pierre Jemale. More notable, however, than these is Pere Norbert, who naturalized himself as an Englishman, changed his name to Parisot, and started a manufactory of pile carpets and a training school in the craft at Fulham about 1751. In 1753 he wrote and published “An account of the new manufactory of Tapestry after the manner of that at the Gobelins, and of carpets after the manner of that at Chaillot (i.e. Savonnerie) now undertaken at Fulham by Mr Peter Parisot.” Two refugee French carpet-makers from the Savonnerie had arrived in London in 1750, and started weaving a specimen carpet in Westminster. Parisot, having found them out, induced the duke of Cumberland to furnish funds for their removal to better workrooms at Paddington. The carpet when finished was presented by the duke to the princess dowager of Wales. Parisot quarrelled with his two employees, enticed others to come over, and then removed the carpet works from Paddington to Fulham. A worker, J. Baptiste Grignon, writing to “Mr Parisot in Foulleme Manufactory,” mentions the marked preference “shown by the English court for velvet,” and how much a “chair-back he had worked in the manner of the Savonnerie had been admired.” Correspondence published in the Nouvelles Archives de l’art français (1878) largely relates to the efforts of the French government to stop the emigration to England of workers from the Gobelins and the Savonnerie. Parisot’s Fulham works were sold up in 1755. He then tried to start a manufactory at Exeter, but apparently without success, as in 1756 his Exeter stock was sold in the Great Piazza auction rooms, Covent Garden. Joseph Baretti (Dr Johnson’s friend), writing from Plymouth on the 18th of April 1760, alludes to his having that morning visited the Exeter manufactory of tapisseries de Gobelins “founded by a distinguished anti-Jesuit—the renowned Father Nobert.” Previously to this a Mr Passavant of Exeter[4] had received in 1758 a premium from the Society of Arts of London for making a carpet in “imitation of those brought from the East and called Turky carpets.” Similar premiums had been awarded by the society in 1757 to a Mr Moore of Chiswell Street, Moorfields, and to a Mr Whitty of Axminster. In 1759 a society’s premium was won by Mr Jeffer of Frome. In the Transactions of the Society, vol. i., dated 1783, it is stated that by their rewards, the manufacture of “Turky carpets is now established in different parts of the kingdom, and brought to a degree of elegance and beauty which the Turky carpets never attained.” Such records as these convey a fair notion of the sporadic attempts which immediately preceded a systematic manufacture of pile carpets in this country. Whilst the Wilton industry survived, that actually carried on at Axminster died towards the end of the 18th century, and the name of Axminster like that of Savonnerie carpets now perpetuates the memory of a locally deceased manufactory, much as in a parallel way Brussels carpets seem to owe their name to the renown of Brussels as an important centre in the 15th and 16th centuries for tapestry-weaving.