More Carpets And Rugs

As previously discussed in The Difference Between Carpets and Rugs, there is a whole lot more to the story about how carpets and rugs came to be made. For example, the Chinese, created patterns of locus flowers with borders of cloud scrolls, and water designs and symbols of many kinds.

For the Buddhist temples, they made a special kind of rug, to be wrapped around the pillars supporting the roof-- sometimes with a background of real gold, and a large Chinese dragon (symbol of the emperor) coiling around the pillar. One feature of Chinese rugs is the open spacing between designs.

In south and west of Asia, where the people were mostly Muslim, there were small and beautiful carpets for religious use. Poor men might use ordinary cloth, but those who could afford them had prayer rugs woven in rich designs, on which they knelt to say their prayers. Inside the border, all prayer rugs showed an arch called the "mikrab" representing the niche in a Mohammedan mosque, which corresponds to the altar in a Christian church.

Different countries or separate regions each had their own rug patterns. However there are two opposite kinds of Muslim patterns. People in Turkey and across middle Asia belonged to a strict sect, called Sunni, which used geometrical designs (with harsh contrasting colors) because it was forbidden to picture animals or any living form of nature. The people of what was once then Persia were of the Shiah, or liberal belief, who loved blossoms and graceful curves, animals and leafy medallions, in soft and rich colors.

Persian rug weavers in time made their way into Turkey and after that the strict Sunni rules were not always observed by Turkish weavers.

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries beautiful Turkish rugs were made with flowery patterns.

Between Tukey and Persia, the land of Armenia wove carpets with barbaric "dragon" designs. North of this was the Caucasus, a wild mountain region with a rough climate, where a mixture of rug weaving people gathered. Caucasian rugs usually showed bold geometrical designs; but roving nomads brought other patterns from many places, even far off Mongolia.

Persia wove carpets of the finest sort were made sometimes of silks and occasionally with gold thread. The pattern might represent a sunny garden and its paths, showing roses and jasmine, hyacinth and cypress trees; or perhaps a hunting scene in the jungle, with a world of make-believe. It might take a month to tie the hundreds of knots that made one square foot of this carpet.

Some rugs were large enough only to be knelled on. Others would fill the great rooms of a palace. The best of these rugs were made about five hundred years ago. their designs were so lovely that they spread eastward into India and westward into Turkey where, they were adopted. Even Turkish sultans had rugs of Persian design.

Turkey and the near east had been making rugs for many centuries, if not such fine ones as those of Persia, when Marco Polo passed through this parts of the world on the way to China. He said:

"The best and handsomest carpets in the world are wrought here."

But he had not yet been to Persia. Europeans, in fact, knew little then about the countries of Asia. Even as late as four hundred years ago they called all Oriental rugs "Turkey carpets," just because European traders found them in the caravan centers or port cities of Asian Minor.

The strange Oriental names we use for different rugs today, like Ghiordes or Tabriz, Kasha, or Bokhara, do not tell about the places they were made, but are names of trade centers where the rugs of a region were gathered for sale. In some cases, however, this is also the name of the tribe.

The Arab followers of Mohammed, called then the Saracens by the Europeans, brought Oriental rugs from the Persian Empire into Italy, Spain, and France more than a thousand years ago.

Later it was the Crusaders and the Venetian traders who brought them.

As world trade grew, the fifteenth and sixteenth century Italian and the seventeenth century Dutch ships carried to Europe wonderful carpets, some of them with designs specially woven to order in Persia or India.

By this time, Europe was making her own rugs. "Saracen carpets" were woven in France in the thirteenth century and in Spain about the same time. Venice had its "Turkish rug" factory too.

Of course the patterns of Oriental carpets meant nothing to Europeans. They did not understand the symbols of the Turkoman nomads, or the design of a prayer rug. so they invented new patters of their own, or changed those of the Orient to suit themselves.

Great tapestries woven with scenes, to hang on the wall, and other flat weave rugs (like the Oriental khilims) were made in the old French towns of Aubusson and Beauvais, and in the Gobelin works in Paris.

In 1604, the French King started a factory in Paris for making pil carpets, and twenty years later another one at nearby Savonnerie.

The famous Savonnerie carpets were only for the royal palaces. They were thick piled and magnificent, designed like formal gardens, with oval flower beds and blossoming branches, flying birds and huge curling leaves.

England had a smaller factory by 1754, at Exeter, where beautiful pil carpets were made. all of these were made by hand, of course. However, the hand-knotted rugs were soon to disappear. In 1749, England started to weave Brussels carpet, which was the beginning of the machine made carpeting we know today. Brussels did not have a cut pile, shot and furry, but a solid surface of tiny loops, like a modern bath towel. Wilton and Axminster were the names of two other machine weaves with a pile, and all three kinds are still made nowadays.

When an American invented the Bigelow power loom more than a century ago, and when chemical dyes replaced the old vegetable dyes in about 1860, the long history of fine hand-woven rugs came to an end.

Weavers have not forgotten how to make them, in far away places, but rug making is now mostly a commercial industry, quite different from the old native art.

Since 1900, "broadloom" carpet has been woven on very large machines. Before that, all machine made carpet was in twenty-seven inch or yard wide strips sewed together, but broadloom can be woven more than thirty feet wide. Even the greatest palace rugs had not been so wide in early days.

Plain rugs of seamless broadloom, or plain backgrounds with patterns of a darker shade, are popular. Rugs in one color are sometimes "sculptured" with a design in looped pile against a background of cut pile. Copying a Chinese idea, "carve" broadloom may show the furry pile carefully trimmed around a design, making a faintly raised surface.

When the English King Edward I (1272 - 1307) married a Spanish princess, everyone was shocked to see that "in the Spanish manner" she used carpets upon the floor of her rooms. What an extravagance! Carpets might be laid at the throne, or used on important occasions, but not even kings walked on them every day.

Even as late as four hundred years ago, the word "carpet" meant something that was carefully used as a bedspread or table cover, not put on the floor. Except in the homes of the rich, the floors were left bare, though they were not always plain.

Sometimes in France and England one saw parquet floors, made of polished wood laid in patterns like a patchwork quilt. Italy had many floors laid in designs of colored marble, an idea brought from India. However, many fine palaces had plain board flooring.

In Sweden, wooden floors were strewn with tiny twigs from spruce or fir trees, or with rye straw. English floors might have straw or fragrant herbs.

The early American house sometimes had "sanded" floors, covered with white sand which was marked into patterns with a sharp stick. The designs were simple and easily made -- using herringbones drawn with a stick, or wavy lines, or swirls done with the end of a broom. Naturally footprints spoiled them; when the room was "tidied up" the sand was quickly smoothed and remarked.

Near mountains or forest land, deer and bear or other animal skins could be had for rugs. Long ago in Sweden, furs were used as bed covers, and the earliest Swedish hand weaving (called a rya) was a shaggy pile carpet made to imitate these furs.

The same kind of coarse weaving, in simple patterns or in the natural color of the the wool, was done by the folk or plain people, in many places.

Fleecy carpets are still made by the mountain tribes in parts of North Africa, to be laid shaggy side down as a blanket to sleep on. Spanish peasants wove a rug called the Alpujarra, covered with tight loops instead of a cut pile.

In eastern Europe, the people of Poland had made gay khilims for many centuries. Small woven or embroidered rugs with bright peasant designs were found everywhere in Europe.

In America, many people three hundred years ago painted their floors with cheerful designs in place of carpets. Later, they painted or stenciled colored borders around the room, or they "spattered" the whole floor with tiny drops of paint in many colors.

Just before the American revolution, Axminster carpeting was advertised in Boston; Persian and "Turkey carpets" were also on sale. Yet many houses had floor covers of sailcloth, or ordinary canvas, painted in pretty patterns to look like Oriental rugs. Sometimes these floor cloths, as they were called, were painted to imitate marble.

In towns along the Atlantic seacoast, fine straw matting (brought from China) might cover the floor. Rag carpeting was common also.

Nineteenth century American houses had some rugs or mats of five different kinds -- home-made rugs, none of them woven on a loom:

• Corn Husk mat (a coarse and harsh round mat formed by braiding dried corn husks together).
• Rag rugs (made of scraps of homespun and hand woven fabrics)
• Appliquéd rugs (a patchwork of tiny scraps sewn onto cloth to make a picture or flower design)
• Braided mats
• Hooked rugs