_Jaxvary 20, 1923) 
- 
iH 
7 
7 
_ week, a full week consists of thirty-five periods.” But 
it will be found that these thirty-five periods for 
‘ 
instruction include two for physical exercises, two for 
_ manual work, two for drawing, and one for music, or 
seven periods altogether, and some of these may be 
_ interrupted or replaced temporarily without loss. 
Thus when games are properly organised they may 
replace physical exercises, and manual work may, to 
some extent, be replaced by experimental work in the 
physical or chemical laboratory at the suitable age. 
_ These are questions which will not be settled immedi- 
ately, and with others they might well be considered ° 
at a meeting of the Science Masters’ Association, 
especially with reference to the question as to how 
many of the science periods should be given to physical 
“and how many to biological studies, the latter being 
often totally neglected. 
Archzology and Technology of Carpets. 
Hand-woven Carpets: Oriental and European. By 
A. F. Kendrick and C. E. C. Tattersall. Vol. 1 
Pp. xi+198. Vol. 2. Pp. xi+205 plates. (Benn 
Bros., Ltd., 1922.) 105s. net. 
HE pile carpet, though now an essential element in 
European domestic economy, is of foreign origin. 
Weaving is one of the most ancient and widespread of 
arts, and to produce a pattern by interlacing continuous 
threads is a natural development from it. From this 
to using threads of different colours is an easy transi- 
tion. But to set the threads in a vast number of short 
lengths upon end, and to pack them so tight that they 
keep that position, entails so much skill and uses so 
much material that they can only have been originally 
produced in response to very special conditions. 
Those conditions are encountered in the life of the 
nomads of Central Asia. The extreme changes of 
temperature in that part of the world, the demand 
of the nomadic life for portable and non-conducting 
fabrics, and the ample supply of wool available to 
these herdsmen, fit in with the archeological findings. 
Central Asia is thus designated as the home of the pile 
carpet. Recent excavations in that region have 
brought to light small fragments of such ancient 
carpets. Most curiously, however, the earliest com- 
plete pile carpet known is of European manufacture. 
It was prepared toward the end of the twelfth century 
in a nunnery at Quedlinburg in the Harz Mountains, 
and represents the well-known medieval theme of the 
_ “ Marriage of Mercury and Philology.”’ Oriental literary 
_ influence was very strong in Europe at that period. 
_ The art of carpet-weaving may well have come to 
Europe at this time along with “ Arabian ” science. 
NO. 2777, VOL. IIT] 
4 
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a e 
NATURE 
_ morning and three in the afternoon for five days per | 
71 
The earliest carpet of which a detailed description 
has come down to us, was made for the Persian Chosroes 
(531-579), and his successors used it until the last 
Sassanian king, Jazdegerd (632-651), pursued by the 
Arabs, was assassinated at Merv. The Persians are said 
to have had two loves, gardens and drinking, and this 
carpet was used for the drinking feasts in the stormy 
winter season when it was impossible to stay in the 
garden. The carpet was designed to portray a garden 
and was called “The Spring of Chosroes.” It was 
woven as though planted with trees and spring flowers, 
intersected by brooks and pathways. Several very 
ancient Persian carpets, with a design which recalls 
that of Chosroes, have survived. 
India was much later in the field than Persia, and 
does not appear to have produced pile carpets until 
the sixteenth century. Pile carpets were devised to 
meet the needs of colder climates than India, and in 
such climates suitable wool for making them can more 
easily be grown. The export trade in Indian carpets 
began in the seventeenth century, and has now reached 
very considerable proportions. After the middle of 
the nineteenth century carpet-knotting was begun in 
the jails, and many of these “ jail-carpets ” are now on 
the market. They are mostly copied from old patterns. 
In Turkey the carpet industry was stimulated in the 
early part of the sixteenth century, when Selim I. in 
1514, and again Suleiman I. in 1534 entered Tabriz and 
carried off craftsmen to Asia Minor. Much earlier, 
however, an export trade between the Anatolian ports 
and Europe—especially Venice—had been opened up 
and carpets began to come westward. Few of these 
have survived, but a number are represented in the 
works of Dutch and Italian artists, Jan van Eyck, 
Memlinc, Van der Goes, Holbein, Ghirlandajo, Pin- 
turicchio, and others. 
The first European country to develop a carpet 
industry was Spain, which was producing carpets of 
similar design to the Turkish in the fifteenth century. 
In England little was known of carpets until at least 
a century later. Paul Hentzer, a German who came 
to London in 1598, states that Queen Elizabeth’s 
presence-chamber at Greenwich was strewn with hay. 
Even rush-matting, though used by the French from 
the beginning of the fifteenth century, does not seem 
to have come into general use in this country till the 
reignof JamesI. Pile carpets, however, were beginning 
to be imported into England from the East about the 
middle of the sixteenth century, and the actual making 
of them here was not long delayed. A carpet repre- 
sented on a fine plate in this volume has in the middle 
the arms of England with the initials of Queen Elizabeth 
and the date 1570. 
Before the end of Elizabeth’s reign the English 
