This carpet with its pattern of pink and green blos- 

 soms scattered on a creamy-yellow ground, however, is 

 not "in accord with the furniture" but instead har- 

 monizes with the bright apple-green walls and the 

 pamted or wallpaper border of floral pattern in blue, 

 pink, red, and white on gray. This would seem to 

 indicate the existence of an alternate plan to that 

 noted in Washington's correspondence for choosing 

 the color of a carpet. The scheme used by Samuel 

 Griffin appears to have been fa\'ored by the Dunlaps, 

 too, insofar as the grayish walls shown in their portrait 

 (fig. 26), rather than the furniture which is upholstered 

 in a brown damask-like fabric, harmonize with the 

 greenish-gray carpet. In contrast. Chief Justice and 

 Mrs. Oliver Ellsworth picked their carpet to "suit the 

 furniture" for the chairs seen in the Ellsworth's por- 

 trait (fig. 1), are upholstered in red and edged with 

 red fringe and red is the predominant color of the 

 carpet. This color plan is duplicated in the portrait 

 Mrs. Noah Smith and Her Children, mentioned prc\i- 

 ously. The red of the boldly patterned floor covering 

 is emphasized by the couch and chair upholstered in 

 bright red. The Cheney family also chose a floor 

 covering to match the furniture, according to their 

 portrait which was painted about 1795. The dark 

 green of the stripes enlivened with red flowers and 

 red-orange leaves matches the upholstery of the couch 

 which is dark green. 



That George Washington used a definite plan in the 

 selection of carpet colors and so stated it, and that 

 other people, as revealed by portraits, also followed a 

 set scheme in regard to the color of floor coverings, is 

 of particular interest since it strongly suggests that the 

 decor of rooms in the 18th century was not necessarily 

 left to chance or an individual's whim but was more 

 often based on formal concepts. Further evidence 

 that there were established ideas in the 18th century 

 about furnishing rooms, at least in reference to color, 

 is the frequent use of the same color and often the 

 same fabric for both furniture coverings and window 

 hangings. Robert Carter, as previously mentioned, 

 planned to have yellow damask at the windows and 

 on the chairs in a room of his Williamsburg house. 

 Perhaps the room was the third parlor, the one for 

 which Carter had ordered from England a wallpaper 

 having a blue ground with large yellow flowers."' 



Yellow also was the color of the damask window cur- 

 tains and of most of the silk-covered chairs and the 

 three sofas in the smaller drawing room of the Presi- 

 dent's house in Philadelphia. '''' 



Such matching color schemes were applied in bed- 

 rooms or chambers, too, as the Cunningham insentory 

 of 1748 indicates. Among the furnishings "in the 

 Great Chamber first floor" of the Cunningham house 

 in Boston were "6 Walnut Tree Chairs with Green 

 China [silk] Bottoms ... 1 Green Camblet Bed & 

 Furniture Compleat & Lined with Strip'd Sattin . . . 

 1 Green Silk Quilt ... 1 Sett Green Camblet Window 

 Curts." Also listed among the furnishings of this room 

 with its handsome-sounding green color scheme was 

 "1 Canvas Floor Cloth." Perhaps the color of the 

 floor covering matched or harmonized with the hang- 

 ings and upholstery. This was the case in the larger 

 dining room of President Washington's Philadelphia 

 residence where, it is reported, "the window curtains 

 were of crimson satin and the dominant color of the 

 carpet was the same." "^ 



Although a thorough study of the choice, use, place- 

 ment, and relationship of colors as well as of furnish- 

 ings is necessary to substantiate these projected sug- 

 gestions concerning 18th-century taste, it seems more 

 than likely that conventional opinions regarding the 

 treatment of interiors existed and that more often than 

 not they determined the appearance of rooms. In any 

 case, the material presented here in regard to floor 

 coverings does point to the presence in 18th-century 

 America of established ideas concerning the selection 

 of carpet colors. Presumably these concepts applied 

 to most types of underfoot furnishings as well as to 

 Wiltons, the kind Washington desired for the blue 

 parlor at Mount Vernon, if obtainable with the 

 "ground or principal flowers" to match the furniture. 



Conclusion 



In conclusion, it is well to remember that floor cover- 

 ings were the exception rather than the rule in the 

 18th century. Decorative for table coverings as 

 well as decorative coverings for floors, carpets and 

 carpeting were rare and valuable items of household 

 furnishings even among the wealthy. In fact, their 



'" Rowland, loc. cit. (footnote 88). 



™ Stephen Decatur, "George Washington and His Presi- 

 dential Furniture," American Collector (February 1941), vol. 

 10, p. 15. 



"5 Ibid. 



58 



BULLETIN 250 : CONTRIBUTIONS FROM THE MUSEUM OF HISTORY AND TECHNOLOGY 



