ORNAMENTATION OF CARPETS COLE. 143 



through commerce with the East Indies and by the employment of 

 Flemings here. But, besides this, a few enterprising Englishmen 

 sent trusted workmen to Asia Minor to learn the methods of making 

 "Turkey carpets." Nowadays, when museums expound technical 

 and artistic efforts, progressive and otherwise, material facts are be- 

 coming available in an almost unexpected way to illustrate allusions 

 and records, and thus give reality to much that has been speculative. 



Unquestionably of English manufacture, or, more correctly, of 

 manufacture in England, is the pile carpet shown on the screen. 

 Details of its ornamentation may throw back to Oriental sources, but 

 the coats of arms are distinctively British. In the center are the 

 royal arms, with a date 1570 and E. R. — Elizabeth Eegina. On the 

 left are the arms of the borough of Ipswich and on the right the arms 

 of a Suffolk family. Other equally interesting examples have lately 

 become available for consultation, so that no doubt we shall soon learn 

 a good deal more of English carpet ornament than we know at pres- 

 ent. Carpet making at Wilton and Axminster dates from the end of 

 the seventeenth century, and its history from' that time forward can 

 be pretty clearly traced. Many Frenchmen were employed there and 

 elsewhere in England during the eighteenth century, and introduced 

 much of the French taste in carpet ornamentation. The Society of 

 Arts, as early as 1758, gave prizes for English-made carpets, " in 

 imitation of those brought from the East, and called Turkey car- 

 pets ; " and the Transactions of the Society of 25 years later record 

 how the manufacture of these was then established in different parts 

 of the kingdom, and "brought to a degree of elegance and beauty 

 which the Turkey carpet never attained." 



It is not difficult to make a pretty close guess of what large Geor- 

 gian carpet designs were like. Some of them at least had a flavor 

 of the French taste, and of that I have one interesting design, made 

 at the beginning of the eighteenth century by Robert de Cotte, for a 

 pile carpet woven at the Savonnerie. It is rather like a ceiling 

 decoration and apropos to a style that the machine-made patent 

 Axminster and other carpets have been affecting during the last few 

 years, presumably to the content of some people, who do not care for 

 the restrained treatment of ornamental forms and harmonious colors 

 in Oriental carpets. 



As to Italian carpets I have not collected much information. Shut- 

 tle weaving by peasants in the Abruzzi continues to the present day 

 and is responsible for most of their bright-colored woolen aprons with 

 stripes that are broche or woven with floating threads. This same 

 character of work has been done for some centuries. In the fifteenth 

 and sixteenth centuries Perugia was notable for white linen table- 

 cloths and towels, broche with blue threads in a considerable variety 

 of interesting patterns. Farther south Pescocostanza appears to have 



