presented to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New 

 York City. Wrought in cross-stitch on canvas or 

 inirlap strips, the carpet was begun in 1810 and com- 

 pleted in 1812, according to a descendant of the Moore 

 family. This owner also stated that the "fireplace 

 rug, six by two feet, made for [the] carpet, had [a] 

 similar border, but narrower, [the] center design 

 being two hounds in pursuit of deer." '"^ On the 

 carpet proper, the field is covered with flower-embel- 

 lished ribbons forming a lattice design, and the border 

 is composed of seashells and a Greek fret. As had 

 been the custom in the 18th century, the carpet was 

 made to fit around the fireplace, and the edges were 

 neatly finished with bordering. 



LIST 



"List" is a term meaning generally a strip or band of 

 material especially of cloth or specifically the selvage 

 or edge part of the cloth. Consequently, a list carpet 

 would be one made of pieces of selvage or strips of 

 fabric. Such a floor covering may have been con- 

 structed in a number of ways, but, based on avail- 

 able information, it seems likely that the list carpet 

 was the same as the so-called rag or, as it is some- 

 times termed, strip carpet (fig. 22). That is, a 

 woven floor covering with the usual warp or length- 

 wise threads but with list or strips of cloth instead of 

 threads used as the weft across the width of the carpet. 

 This would appear to be the type referred to in an 

 1807 publication, The Book oj Trades or Library of 

 the Useful Arts in the section on carpets: "Another 

 sort of carpet in use, is made of narrow slips of list 

 sewed together; these of course are very inferior to 

 those just described [i.e., Axminster], but they employ 

 many women and children." 



The use of women and children in this branch of 

 carpet making, as in the knotting process of Axminsters 

 both in England and this country, is an interesting 

 sidelight on 18th-century labor practices in the field 

 of floor coverings. Although carpet weaving seems 

 to have been carried on mainly by professional weav- 

 ers and was, according to the Book of Trades, a good 

 business for masters and journeymen, the instances 

 cited suggest that certain tasks were considered to 

 be women's and children's work almost from the 

 inception of the industry. 



That underfoot furnishings made of list were 

 available in the colonies by 1761 is shown by two 

 adxertisements of that year in the Boston Gazelle — one 

 on January 26 for the sale of house furnishings and 

 the other on January 29 for imports from London 

 and Bristol — that included list carpeting for stairs. 

 Further verification of its use in the colonies is pro- 

 vided by the Sewell inventory of 1777 which had the 

 following entry: "3 ps. List Carpetting 20/." Whether 

 these items were commercially manufactured or 

 homemade is of course unknown. Among the various 

 types of underfoot furnishings used in the 18th cen- 

 tury, however, it seems possible that list carpeting was 

 one of the kinds that could easily have been made 

 in the home if a loom were available. That this was 

 the case in one community is revealed by Samuel 

 Griswold Goodrich in his recollections of life in Ridge- 

 field, Connecticut, in the early 19th century: 



Carpets were then only known in a few families, and 

 were confined to the keeping-room and parlor. They 

 were all home-made: the warp consisting of woolen yarn, 

 and the woof [or weft] of lists and old woolen cloth, cut 

 into strips and sewed together at the ends.'"-' 



Further evidence suggesting that list floor coverings 

 were a product of the home appears in Annals of 

 Philadelphia. According to this compilation of recol- 

 lections, events, and extant recofds, "the manufacture 

 of carpet was not introduced into this country, with 

 the exception of the home-made rag-carpet, until 

 some time after the Revolutionary War." "" 



Just how prevalent list carpeting was in the 18th 

 century, however, is difficult to determine. The fact 

 that it was of simple construction, might be made at 

 home, and utilized materials commonly at hand, such 

 as rags or narrow strips of fabric, would seem to favor 

 fairly widespread use. Nevertheless, the available 

 information suggests the contrary, since there is scant 

 mention of list carpeting by name in the contemporary 

 sources studied. Consequently, until additional in- 

 formation is forthcoming, little more can be said about 

 list carpeting than that it was one type of underfoot 

 furnishing that was available and used in 18th- 

 century America. 



'"* Cornelia Bateman Faraday, European and American 

 Carpets and Rugs (Grand Rapids, Mich.: The Dean-Hicks Co., 



1929), pp. 278-79. 



I™ Samuel Griswold Goodrich, Recollections of a Life Time or 

 Afen and Things I Have Seen (New York: Miller, Orton and 

 Mulligan, 1856), vol. 1, pp. 74-75. 



""John F. Watson, Annals of Philadelphia, edit. Willis P. 

 Hazard (rev. ed.; Philadelphia: Edwin .S. Stuart, 1898), 

 vol. 3, p. 125. 



46 



BULLETIN 2.5 : CONTRIBUTIONS FROM THE MUSEUM OF HISTORY AND TECHNOLOGY 



