142 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1910. 



until the seventeenth century that pile-carpet making, under this pat- 

 ronage, is well started at a disused soap factory known as the Savon- 

 nerie of Chaillot, on the outskirts of Paris. Here were made the 

 tapis veloutes — pile carpets as distinct from the tapis ras^ or flat-sur- 

 face carpets that were being produced at several of the tapestry weav- 

 ing centers — the Gobelins, Beauvais, Toumai, etc. The manufacture 

 of the two sorts was not combined at the Gobelins works until early 

 in the nineteenth century. Aubusson carpets were first made early in 

 the eighteenth century from designs that reflected the Louis XV. 

 style — naturalistic floral garlands, ribbon knots, all shown with lights 

 and shades, and entirely distinct in style from that of any Oriental 

 rugs and carpets. 



In Spain some rugs are likely to have been made at many of the 

 old Moorish towns, Malaga, Almeria, and Granada, perhaps as early 

 as the middle of the ninth century, when their ornamentation would 

 have been probably of the geometrical and abstract character, inter- 

 mixed with inscriptions that appealed to Sunnite Mohammedans. 

 Toward the end of the fifteenth century Spain had much to do with 

 Flanders, where tapestry weaving was flourishing; it appears that 

 at this time the making of Spanish carpets as distinct from Moorish 

 carpets began. Specimens of them have come lately into collectors' 

 hands, some with cut pile, others with looped surface similar to those 

 Egypto-Roman stuffs that we saw at the beginning of this lecture, 

 and others wrought in a sort of cross-stitch embroidery. 



Here are now two of the Spanish rugs I have in mind, made prob- 

 ably in the sixteenth or seventeenth century, one (pi. 6, fig. 1) with 

 a surface of loops has an ogival net or frame of vine stems with sym- 

 metrical groups of leaves and grapes alternately placed in the ogival 

 panels. The scheme of the design is Byzantine originally, and be- 

 came finely developed in Italian velvets of the fifteenth century. The 

 border of this carpet is of a continuous stem scroll with offshoots of 

 conventional plant shapes. The other carpet (pi. 6, fig. 2) is of cut 

 pile of fair quality, its field of three octagonal panels or wreaths 

 inclosing scroll ornament with a slight resemblance to Saracenic 

 arabesque disposed on the plan of a cross, has a border of Italian- 

 esque scrolls, griffons, and baskets. In both carpets the corners of 

 the borders are not well managed in design — a defect which is seen 

 constantly in Oriental carpets other than Persian, and runs through 

 ornamental textiles woven from insufficient drafts, the completion 

 of which is left to chance that the weaver can supply the deficiency 

 of design. 



The weaving of pile and other carpets in European countries from 

 designs by Europeans arose more or less simultaneously in Spain, 

 Italy, France, Flanders, and England, about the middle of the six- 

 teenth century. The English industry was stimulated a great deal 



