Figure 15. — Floor covering, American, early igth century. This woven wool carpeting used by the Copp 

 family of Stonington, Connecticut, consists of two 36-inch pieces sewed together and bound at one end 

 with printed cotton fabric. On one side of the carpeting the large and small squares are green; the dividing 

 bars are a mixture of yellow and orange. On the other side, the colors are reversed. (USNM 28810; 

 Smithsonian photo 47090-C.) 



The Copp family carpet is of single-cloth construc- 

 tion woven in 36-inch widths and has a reversible 

 pattern of squares in shades of grayed greens and 

 dulled yellows and oranges. Some of it is in individual 

 pieces and some is sewed together, indicating that at 

 one time it was a large or room-size carpet. This 

 carpeting cannot, of course, be considered ingrain 

 in the strictest sense of the name since it is of single- 

 rather than double-cloth construction. Nevertheless, 

 the fact that the carpeting is reversible is of interest 

 insofar as it may provide a clue to a type of pattern 

 that might have been made in a two-ply construction 

 and was intended for use underfoot. Since the carpet 

 is reversible, the ground color might be either green or 

 yellow and orange according to one's desire. Simi- 

 larly, the predominant color of the carpets already 

 mentioned with "black & green grounds" would have 



been dependent upon which surface faced up at a 

 given time. Other colors that might have been used 

 for ingrain carpets in the 18th century are suggested by 

 two references from Irish newspapers. One, an ad- 

 vertisement in the Dublin Gazette of 1762, mentioned 

 scarlet and madder-red Scotch carpeting. '^ The 

 other, a notice of 1764 in the Freeman's Journal on 

 December 4, mentioned "Black and Yellow Bird Eye 

 pattern" floor coverings.*" 

 The patterns of most ingrains were probably simple, 



'9 Ada K. Longfield, "Some Eighteenth Century Dublin 

 Carpet-Makers," The Burlington Magazine {June 1943), vol. 82, 

 p. 151. 



'" Ada K. Longfield, "History of Carpet-Making in Irclane 

 in the 18th Century," The Journal of the Royal Society of Anti- 

 quaries of Ireland (June 1940), vol. 70, p. 78. 



PAPER 59: FLOOR COVERINGS IN 18TH-CENTURY AMERICA 



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