The mention of carpets dates from a very remote period of antiquity. In Egypt they were first applied to religious purposes by the priests of Heliopolis, and were used to garnish the palaces of the Pharaohs. It was also a custom of antiquity to place them under the couches of guests at banquets. Regarding a carpet rug, which he considers to be of ancient Egyptian manufacture, Sir J. Gardner Wilkinson says,—“This rug is made like many cloths of the present day, with woollen threads, on linen strings. In the centre is the figure of a boy in white, with a goose above, the hieroglyphic of ‘ a child,’ upon a green ground, around which is a border composed of red and blue lines,” &c. (Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians, vol. iii. pp. 141-2). The carpets of the Homeric age were generally white or plain cloths; but they were also sometimes produced with various colours and embroidered designs. At the supper of Iphicrates, purple carpets were spread on the floor; and at the magnificent banquet of Ptolemy Philadelphus (an account of which is given by Callixenus of Rhodes) we learn that underneath 200 golden couches “were strewed purple carpets of the finest wool, with the carpet pattern on both sides; and there were handsomely embroidered rugs, very beautifully elaborated with figures. Besides this,” he adds, “thin Persian cloths covered all the centre space where the guests walked, having most accurate representations of animals embroidered on them” (Athenaeus, v. 26). The Babylonians, who were very skilful in weaving cloths of divers colours (Pliny, viii. 48), delineated upon their carpets entire groups of human figures, together with such fabulous animals as the dragon, the sphynx, and the griffin. These were numbered among the luxuries of Elagabalus. On the tomb of Cyrus was spread a purple Babylonian carpet, and another covered the bed whereon his body was placed (Arrian, vi. 29). These carpets were exported in considerable quantities to Greece and Rome, where they were highly esteemed. The pre-eminence of the ancient Babylonian carpet weavers does not appear ever to have been lost by their successors, and at the present time the carpets of Persia are as much prized and as eagerly sought by European nations as they were when ancient Babylon was in its glory.

Oriental carpets were first introduced into Spain by the Moors; and at a later date the Venetians imported them into Italy, and supplied Western Europe with this luxurious manufacture. We have frequent mention of them during the Middle Ages, and their costliness and magnificence are celebrated in the illuminated pages of fabliaux and romances. They were spread in the presence-chambers of royalty, before the high altars of chapels and cathedrals, in the bowers of “ladyes faire,” and on the summer grass. Many articles of furniture were also covered with them — beds, couches, tables, and regal faldistories; but here it becomes difficult to distinguish between carpet and tapestry, both being used promiscuously. Tapestry of Baldekine or Baldachine (from Bal dak, an ancient name of Baghdad) was a carpet inwrought with gold and silver threads. Such carpets were carried on poles, and uplifted as a canopy over the host, and over great personages in procession. The troubadours had carpets of gold embroidery which they laid upon the grass beneath them. Hearthrugs and throne carpets, gorgeously emblazoned with heraldic centre pieces, were the handiwork of high-born dames during the romance period. To some of them were attached fringes, but these were more usually composed of the fag ends of the warp, like those of Persia, India, and Turkey. A black velvet carpet, “fringed with silver and gold, and lined with taffeta,” is enumerated in the inventory of Archbishop Parker’s household furniture in 1577. Rushes were strewn on the floor of Queen Mary’s presencechamber, and that of Elizabeth had the additional covering of a Turkey carpet. Long prior to this, however, Eastern carpets had been introduced. In the reign of Edward VI. we read that before communion tables were placed—

“Carpets full gay, That wrought were in the Orient.”

Chequered matting appears to have been very generally used about the 15th century. In Lydgate’s metrical life of St Edmund (MS. Harl., No. 2278), is a representation of the room wherein that saint was born, the floor is covered with chequered matting, and a fringed hearth-rug of Gothic design is before the fire-place. Carpets composed entirely of leather strips interlaced together may be seen in our antiquarian museums.

In the reign of Henry IV. the carpet manufacture appears to have been introduced from Persia into France. Colbert, the minister of Louis XIV., established the manufactory at Beauvais in 1664, which is now in the hands of the French Government, and produces very artistic specimens. A variety of these, “in Turkish, Peruvian, and Chinese styles,” was exhibited at London in 1851. The national manufactory of Gobelins, which likewise sent its beautiful carpets and tapestry to the Great Exhibition, was established shortly after that of Beauvais. It was purchased in 1677 by Colbert from the Gobelin family, whose progenitors, two centuries earlier (Gilles and Jehan Gobelin), brought their art, as was supposed, from Flanders. An attempt was made, in the time of Henry VIII., by William Sheldon, to start this manufacture in England; and under the patronage of James I. it was more successfully established, with the superintendence of Sir Francis Crane, at Mortlake in Surrey, where both carpets and tapestry were produced. Toward this object the sum of £2676 sterling was contributed by its royal patron, and French weavers were brought over to assist. But it does not appear that anything considerable was effected, until after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, when artizans of every trade fled to England, and among them tapestry and carpet weavers, who settled in various parts. About the year 1750, Mr Moore was awarded a premium by the Society of Arts for the best imitation Turkey carpets; and Parisot conducted an establishment for their manufacture at Paddington, under the patronage of the duke of Cumberland. Subsequently carpets were wrought on the same principle at Axminster, in Devonshire, whence the name; and afterwards at Wilton, where the manufacture is still continued. The Board of Trustees for the Encouragement of Arts and Manufactures in Scotland offered prizes for the best Persian and Turkey carpets, which were carried off by Gregory, Thomsons, & Co. of Kilmarnock, and Whytock &. Co. of Edinburgh. About ninety years previously they had been made in the vicinity of Holyrood Palace.

Carpets, as manufactured at the present day, range themselves under two classes. The first and ancient class being such as are made by knotting into the warp, tuft after tuft, the materials of the pattem; and the second consisting of those in which the pattern is woven up in the loom. To the first class belong Oriental carpets generally, as well as such as are woven at many places throughout Europe under the name of Turkish carpets. Persia is now, as it has been from the most remote times, the recognized source of what is most truly artistic, durable, and valuable in this manufacture; and after the products of that country, those of various parts of India and Turkey are most esteemed.

Persian Carpets. — The carpet weaving of Persia is similar in its process to the tapestry manufacture of Gobelins, Beauvais, or Aubusson. The tapestry, as is well known, consists of tufts of wool (French moquettes) or other fibre sewed on the strings of the warp, by means of small shuttle needles. The Persian carpet is formed by knotting into the warp tuft after tuft of woollen yarn, over each row of which a woof shot is passed, the fingers being here employed instead of the shuttle-needles, as the fabric is of a coarser description. In both methods the principle is the same. Both are formed in looms of very simple construction, the warp threads are arranged in parallel order, whether upright or horizontal, and the fabric and pattern are produced by coloured threads, hand-wrought upon the warp.

In Persia there are entire tribes and families whose only occupation is that of carpet weaving. These dispose of their productions at the bazaars to native merchants, who remove them to Smyrna or Constantinople, where they meet with European purchasers. The finest carpets both as to design and texture come from Kerman, Feraghan, and Kurdistan. The Kerman products resemble in appearance the finest velvet pile carpets, but with the nap cut much shorter. The carpets of Feraghan are in external appearance somewhat like Brussels carpets, while those of Kurdistan have their pattern on both sides and are woven quite smooth. The trade in real Persian carpets was formerly limited, owing to their small size, as they were seldom larger than hearth-rugs, long and narrow in shape; but with the extension of the European demand larger carpets are now made, and they are woven in pieces with separate borders, so that they can be sewed together. The introduction of aniline dyes into Persian designs is likely, it is feared, to be detrimental to the mellow effect of native colours. Very many of the imported carpets are considerably tarnished by exposure in bazaars, if they have not indeed been already used. To render these more saleable they are cleaned by cropping the surface, which in some cases is shaved quite close to the knot; hence a proportion of those brought to England have not their original richness and depth of pile. Carpets of silk were at one period extensively made in the country, but this manufacture has been entirely abandoned for more than a century. Felted carpets or mirmuls are also very largely made in Persia, but do not constitute an export commodity. Very beautiful patterns are produced in this felt carpeting, by means of coloured tufts of worsted inlaid or inserted during the process of manufacture, producing a regular pattern when finished.

Turkey Carpets. — The greater part of the real Turkey carpets imported into England are manufactured at Ushak or Ouchak, in the province of Aïdin, about six days’ journey from Smyrna, and rugs are principally made at Kulah, an adjacent village. In the provinces of Khodavendikiar, Adana, and Nish numerous households are employed in their production, as also in the districts of Bozrah, the city of Aleppo, and the villages of Trebizond. Here and there, throughout Caramania, such carpets are also made. The Turcomans of Tripoli, the women of Candia, and the peasantry of Tunis and Algiers are likewise engaged in the fabrication of a similar kind of carpet. In none of these places, however, does any large manufactory exist; the carpets are the work of families and households. These carpets are woven in one piece, and there is this notable peculiarity in their manufacture, that the same pattern is never again exactly reproduced; no two carpets are quite alike. The patterns are very remarkable, being rude and simple in design, and coming down from a very remote period. The colours are rich and harmonious, red or green being the usual ground colours with blues, yellows, and black, but very rarely is any white permitted to appear. The design is usually made up of a large central more or less diamonded pattern with smaller diamonds filling up the corners and sides, the whole surrounded with a border of lines of the different colours. No representation of any living form, nearer than what might be taken as the rude outline of leaves, is introduced into the designs. The peculiarities of the patterns have been accounted for on the theory that the Turkey carpet represents inlaid jewelled work, which accords with the Oriental delight in jewels and works in precious stones.

Indian Carpets. — The manufacture of carpets, which have a very wide range of texture, quality, and material, is widely distributed throughout the East Indies. The weaving is carried on entirely by natives, who combine this as a domestic industry with agricultural labour according to the season. It has also been very widely adopted as a proper and profitable species of prison labour. The chief centres of the manufacture of woollen carpets, both for native use and export, are Mirzapore and Benares in the north-west provinces, and Masulipatam in the Madras Presidency, from which latter place the carpets most highly prized in Great Britain are imported.

At Benares and Moorshedabad are produced velvet carpets with gold embroidery. A very elaborate carpet, sent from Kashmir to the Exhibition of 1851 by Maharajah Goolab Singh, was composed entirely of silk, with a pile nearly an inch thick, in every square foot of which, we are informed, there were at least 10,000 ties or knots. Ornamental hookah carpets and rugs with a silken pile are made in Mooltan, Amritsar, Peshawar, and Kashmir, those of Mooltan being the most famous. Woollen rugs are made very cheaply throughout Bengal and are in great demand; but for texture, workmanship, and colouring the rugs of Ellore, Tanjore. and Mysore are unsurpassed. Cotton carpets or Suttringees are a cheap substitute for woollen fabrics in almost universal use throughout India. They are woven in stripes of either blue and white or red and white,—the principal centres of the manufacture being Agra, Bareilly, Patna, Birbhum, and Bardwan. The price of these articles is generally determined by their weight, but those of Agra are accounted the best. There is considerable variety in the designs of Indian carpets, but it is allowed they exhibit perfection of harmonious colouring. The prevailing colour is a full deep red, broken with leaves, <fcc., of an orange hue, and interspersed with soft-toned blues or greens. A creamy white is also introduced with excellent effect; but of late years the introduction of bleached whites has robbed the patterns of that mellow subdued effect which constituted one of their leading charms.

Carpets made in this hand or needle-work style to which we have hitherto been alluding have long been made at various places throughout Europe, and the manufacture is still continued. The most celebrated and artistic textures of this class are the Aubusson, Savonnerie, and Beauvais carpets of France, and the similar products of Manufacture Royale de Tapis of Tournai in Belgium. The manufacture of what are called Turkey carpets is also wide spread, and the common Axminster rugs of England are made on the same principle. But the characteristic carpet weaving of Europe is entirely the product of machine or loom work, and of such there are several distinct varieties. Of these the first is the Kidderminster, or Scotch, Carpet. — This is called also the ingrain carpet, and is made in many parts of Scotland and the north of England, and in the United States of America. It consists of worsted warp traversed by woollen weft, and is woven in pieces about a yard wide. It is composed of two distinct webs interlaced together at one operation and is therefore a double or two-ply carpet, similar on its two sides. In this article only two colours can with propriety be introduced, as otherwise it has a striped or mixed appearance. A pure or plain colour can only be obtained where the weft traverses the warp of the same colour. Suppose a crimson figure on a maroon ground; the one web is maroon, the other is crimson, and the pattern is produced by these intersecting each other at fixed points; what is crimson on one side being maroon on the other and vice versa. One beam contains the warp of both plies, arranged in two tiers, which is passed through the mads or metallic eyes of the harness—two threads through each eye— and thence through the reed. The harness draws up certain warp threads, to admit of the passage of the shuttle with the weft, the pattern depending upon the warp threads which are so drawn up. This was formerly effected by means of a revolving barrel, whose surface was studded with pins, which by rotation acted upon the warp threads. These studs being arranged so as to produce one pattern, a separate barrel or a new arrangement of the studs was requisite for every other pattern. But this machine is now superseded by the more efficient Jacquard apparatus, which produces the pattern by means of an endless chain of perforated cards working against parallel rows of needles. The successful introduction of the power-loom for the use of the carpet weaver, which was accomplished by the ingenious perseverance of Mr William Wood, about a quarter of a century ago, has had a marked influence in cheapening carpets and extending the limits of the industry. An improvement upon the Kidderminster carpet is the triple or three-ply fabric, the invention of Mr Thomas Morton of Kilmarnock. This is composed of three distinct webs, which, by interchanging their threads, produce the pattern on both sides, permitting at the same time much greater variety of colour, with a corresponding increase of thickness and durability in the texture.

Figured Venetian carpeting is of similar description; but in it the woof is completely covered by a heavy body of warp. Dutch carpeting is much inferior in quality, and was originally made of cow-hair, but now of the coarsest wook Neither fabric has great capabilities of design; simple diced patterns are wrought in the Venetian, stripes and chequers in the Dutch.

The Brussels Carpet is a very superior texture composed of worsted and linen, and has a rich corded appearance. The figures are raised entirely from the warp, by inserting a series of wires between the linen foundation and the superficial yarn. These wires are afterwards withdrawn, leaving a looped surface. In this manufacture there is a great waste of material, and the colours are usually limited to five, although in carpets of the best quality six colours are introduced. Each colour has its continuous layer of thread, running from end to end of the web, which rises to the surface at intervals indicated by the design, and then sinks into the body of the fabric. Thus, in a five-colour Brussels there are five layers or covers, only one of which is visible at any given point; and owing to .the irregularity of their ascent to the surface, the colours cannot be placed upon one beam, but each thread is wound on a separate bobbin, with a weight attached to give a proper tension. These bobbins are arranged in five frames jutting out behind the loom—260 bobbins in each frame for the ordinary width. Additional frames are requisite for additional colours introduced; but where more than five are engaged the pattern is rather indistinct. The threads of all the bobbins are then drawn through the harness, heddles, and reed, to unite with the linen yarn in the compound fabric, the Jacquard machine being employed to produce the pattern. The manufacture of Brussels carpets was first introduced into Wilton upwards of a century ago, from Tournai in Belgium Kidderminster is now the chief seat of this manufacture; but it is also extensively prosecuted in many other localities Moquette or Wilton Carpets are woven in the same manner as Brussels carpets, differing only in this, that the loops are cut open into an elastic velvet pile. To effect this the wires are not circular as in the Brussels fabric but flat, and furnished with a knife edge at the upper extremity, the sharp point of which, drawn across the yarn, cuts the pile These carpets, which have a rich soft appearance, besides being manufactured in many parts of England and Scotland, are also made in France.

Tapestry Carpets are manufactured by a very ingenious process which was invented and patented by Mr Richard Whytock of Edinburgh in 1832. In Mr Whytock’s invention, by a combination of printing and weaving, a pile similar to Brussels carpeting is produced, in which any desired range of colours is available to the designer, while only a single thread is used in the texture instead of the five or six which run through...