THE HOUSE AND ITS EQUIPMENT. 



Music and Painting, Commerce and Industry, and a few pictures of towns. No wonder the Persian rug 

 looked a little old-fashioned beside such a wonder. Morris, on whom this Exhibition acted as a healthy 

 stimulant, determined to remedy matters so hideously ugly. He had such an appreciation of Oriental 

 carpet-weaving that he half doubted whether we had any business to make carpets at all, and knowing 

 that we were very unlikely to beat the Persians, with their centuries of tradition in the craft, thought 

 the endeavour should be made &quot; to get enough of form and meaning into it to justify our making it at 

 all.&quot; He started by designing cheap Kidderminster, Brussels and Wilton piles, which for want of 

 another term might be called &quot; Morrisey &quot; in pattern, and the flowing lines of which were spoiled by 

 translation into the fabric itself. He then followed on with weaving real Axminsters of a close soft pile, 

 in one piece in the Eastern way, and these he called the &quot; Hammersmith &quot; carpets. It is very doubtful 



if anything better than these have been done, either before or since, in Eiu 



The design is not too 



obviously founded on Eastern patterns, yet in it is the same appreciation that a carpet is in reality a 

 mosaic of small squares of wool, and the lines are definitely subordinated to those squares. As well 

 Morris realised that, as a carpet may be seen from any side, it should either have an all-over pattern or 

 follow the Persian model, with a central figure filled in all round. 



Of Eastern types, so much could be said that the limit of these notes would be reached in a recapitu 

 lation of the different sorts alone ; it can only be stated, then, that fine work is met with throughout the 

 East ; and so unprogressive, according to the 51 standard, are these people, that it is still nearly impossible 



to find any uninteresting work, so 

 obstinately do they cling to their 

 ideals of colour and beauty. For the 

 same reason of space their history 

 cannot even be indicated, as it is pro 

 bable that they were being made, on 

 much the same lines that they now 

 are, when we were more concerned 

 with ornamenting our bodies rather 

 than dyeing our carpets with woad. 

 Beautiful as Persian carpets and rugs 

 undoubtedly are, it yet remains doubt 

 ful if they are thoroughly suitable for 

 Western schemes of decoration ; a 

 glowing Eastern rug, littered all over 

 with &quot; occasional &quot; tables and chairs, 

 and fringed around with cabinets and 

 revolving bookcases, seems always to 

 call for space in which it can be seen, 

 and sunlight real hot glowing sun- 

 to show its intricate beauties. In very 

 much the same way, the marbles and 

 mosaics of Ravenna and Venice need 

 the Italian atmosphere, and lose all 



their beauty in our murkiness. So that it would seem well, in any scheme of decoration, when using 

 fine Persian carpets, in some measure to subordinate them to their surroundings, or in the case of the 

 smaller rugs, to use them only here and there, as jewels on a plain under-carpet. 



One need not recapitulate all the sorts of carpets made they can be found in any house-furnishing 

 list ; but, instead, carpet buyers may be reminded of a few essentials we all know and yet sometimes 

 forget. The carpet is the foundation of one s colour scheme ; here one starts, and if a bad start is made, 

 we can never regain our hold on harmony. It should always be remembered that colour is wiped out 

 in some measure by sunshine or shadow. The painter prefers a grey day, because then he sees colour 

 in the half-tones, midway between the extremes noted. For this reason the Italian peasant can wear 

 coloured dresses that would be garish in our grey isle, and the blue and yellow macaw is not nearly so 

 vivid a little bird personality in British Guiana as he is at the Zoo. It is not meant by this that we should 

 rush into greys and disconsolate drabs ; but a certain discrimination must be used in introducing vivid 

 colourings into our homes. They need more sun than \ve have. If we look about and see what Nature 

 has attempted with us, we shall hardly find a marble or rock, stone or slate, bird or beast, that has not 

 been coloured on sober lines, though in joyous mood she sometimes stains the granite rock with golden lichen 

 or lets the gorse flame across the common. So that if we do not get that riot, that ecstasy of colouring, of the 

 tropics as a whole, there is no reason why we should not occasionally let ourselves break loose in detail. 



One of the finest pieces of writing in &quot; The Stones of Venice &quot; concerns itself with a comparison 

 between an English cathedral, &quot;grey, and grisly with heads of dragons and mocking fiends, worn by the 



109. PART OF A MODERN PERSIAN RUG. 



