By Brenda Rose

Carpets from the Axminster manufactory were the undisputed choice for wealthy English country homes and town houses during the second half of the 18th century and in the early years of the 19th.  Two centuries later, antique English carpets are again much in vogue among interior designers and their clients, especially in America.  With increasing numbers of these handsome late Georgian and Regency weavings leaving the British Isles, the author undertook to identify as many as possible and to gather together, while there is still time, details of their design and structure.

Entering the dining room at Attingham Park in Shropshire, the visitor’s eye is immediately caught by the strong blue colour and fan-shaped ‘sunburst’ design of a magnificent hand-knotted carpet (2). Four signs of the zodiac, Aries, Cancer, Libra and Capricorn, are in a circular band around the central roundel, and pairs of gold and russet gryphons occupy lozenges in the four corners.  Acanthus scrolls and bands of flowers fill the main field and the carpet has a ‘Greek key’ border remarkable for being truly three-dimensional.

The National Trust guidebook for the house used to say simply that the carpet was “an English carpet of c 1800”.  The study on which this article is based began as an attempt to discover where the carpet might have been made and what its exact date might have been.

For many years it seems that any hand-knotted carpet that was obviously English was labelled ‘Exeter’ or perhaps ‘English Savonnerie’.  Occasionally, attribution was to Thomas Moore of Moorfields, but last on the list seems always to have been Axminster.  Yet, as is now well known, the Axminster factory dominated the market for hand-knotted carpets in the years between 1755 when production started, and 1835 when Samuel Rampson Whitty, the grandson of the founder of the ‘manufactory’, Thomas Whitty, was declared bankrupt.  Such was the reputation of these carpets that from the 1790’s onwards the term ‘Axminster’ came to be applied to any English hand-knotted pile carpet, wherever made.  After 1835 (and until 1957) the majority of them were, in fact, made in Wilton, near Salisbury, because the firm of Blackmores, already manufacturing machine-made strip carpeting there, bought the remaining Axminster stock and looms and extended their business to include hand-knotted carpets.  These later carpets made in Wilton were still called Axminsters.

The story of how Thomas Whitty (1713-1792), cloth manufacturer of Axminster in Devonshire, came to make his first carpet is well known.  As an old man, he wrote an account for his son describing how, in 1755, in an attempt to provide a better income to support his growing family, he spied on the carpet factory of French émigrés in Fulham and returned to Axminster where “I immediately began to prepare a loom and materials for making a Carpet, and on MIDSUMMER’S DAY 1755, a memorable day for my family, I began the first carpet I ever made, taking my children and their Aunt Betty Harvey to overlook and assist them, for my first workers”.

So began eighty years of continuous production in this small English town, which ceased only with bankruptcy in 1835, following a disastrous fire seven years earlier in January 1828, from which the manufactory never recovered.

The fire destroyed not only buildings, looms and stock but also most of the written records, including the working drawings for carpets.  Whereas the Woodward Grosvenor Company of Kidderminster still have an extensive archive of early cartoons, such cartoons are virtually non-existent for early Axminster carpets.  One, a small black and white drawing labelled simply ‘No. 63 Persia’ (3) is in the archives of the present Axminster Carpet Company.  Undated but obviously early, it must have been used for the carpet now in the Library at Berrington Hall in Herefordshire, which from circumstantial evidence seems to date from the early 19th century.  Another undated coloured drawing for a border design is also in the present Axminster Company’s archive and can be seen made up in the Drawing Room carpet at Ickworth in Suffolk.

Both these designs appear in the Wilton Studio Book, an inventory of more than 450 designs compiled in the 1890’s by someone sorting out the contents of ‘old cupboards’ at the Wilton factory.  It is a fascinating book with comments and thumbnail sketches of designs from carpet samples and design papers stored in the various compartments of the cupboards.  At least a dozen of the entries have a note by them saying that this design was “made for” or “made by” Whitty, and several others can be recognised as early Axminsters.  An interesting entry is Number 5, listed under the heading “Turkey Axminster Carpets”.  The notes describe it as an “ugly old-fashioned carpet border on a magenta ground” made for Sir William Heathcote.  It is, in fact, the border from the carpet made for  the Saloon at Hackwood Park in Hampshire, and supplied by Gillows in May 1813 to Thomas Orde-Powlet, the first Baron Bolton.(7).

The presence of these samples and papers in the cupboards at Wilton suggests that many of the Axminster point-papers may have survived the fire and bankruptcy and were handed down to Wilton.  They are also a warning, if one is needed, of the dangers of trying to date early Axminster carpets on the basis of design alone.

Documentary evidence for dating these carpets is sadly lacking.  Of the seventy carpets in this study dating from before 1835, only nine have indisputable documentary evidence for when they were made.  One of the aims of the study was to see if there were any technical details which might indicate date, but no such factors have emerged, and all the evidence so far is that materials and methods remained virtually unchanged through the whole eighty years of production, and even beyond into the Wilton period.

The Attingham carpet was almost certainly made at Axminster.  Its side finishes are unfortunately missing, but its other features are appropriate for an Axminster.  The reverse has the slightly ribbed look of carpets made with a symmetrical knot and warps all on one level (in contrast to the Exeter and Moorfields carpets which have fully depressed warps in the manner of French Savonnerie carpets).  The knot count at Attingham is high for an Axminster.  It has 49 knots to the square inch, the range in the carpets studied being from 16 (248/dm²) to 49 (760/dm²) with the majority having between 25 (388/dm²) and 36 (558/dm²).  There is no evidence whatsoever that knot count relates to date; almost certainly it was related to price.

The warp at Attingham is 4-ply, undyed ivory wool, and the weft is bast fibre (linen or hemp) with two shoots.  This is standard. All but three of the carpets studied have woollen warps of 3-, 4- or 5-ply undyed wool.  Two have bast fibre warps, and a third exception in the Royal Collection and probably dating from the early 1830’s, has a jute warp and weft and was perhaps an attempt to encourage the early jute industry.  Wool was sometimes used for wefts but two-thirds of the carpets studied have the more usual bast fibre wefts, always with two shoots.  Side finishes, where they remain, are of coloured wool, often of the main-field colour, binding the outer two warps in a figure-of-eight.  Fringes are usual at both ends, with or without a flat-weave border, though from about 1830 it seems to have become more usual to have simple flat woven finishes at both ends, folded under and stitched down.

The output from the factory was probably not very great.  The building was small.  In 1787, Abigail Adams, wife of John Adams, then first minister in England of the newly independent United States (later its second president), recorded a visit to Axminster in her diary, writing that “the building in which this business is performed is by no means equal to an American Barn.”  The reverend Edward Daniel Clarke, visiting in 1791, wrote that he was “surprised to find such a little paltry place, the origin of so much magnificence”.  There were certainly several looms in use simultaneously, for Clarke saw forty women employed at the knotting, and two years earlier, at the time of the visit of George III and Queen Charlotte in 1789, the workers were “ranged in two rows, ten on each side, withoutside their several looms”.

We know that in 1758-9 at least six carpets were made and presented for the third and last annual competition arranged by the Society for Promoting Arts and Sciences (now the Royal Society of Arts).

Thomas Whitty has been joint winner in 1757 with Thomas Moore of Moorfields, and again in 1758, when three carpets were required.  Of the six carpets made for the final competition, in which he was outright winner, Whitty wrote that “several were fine ones and of large size”.  In fact the largest was 17 feet 6 inches (5.33m) wide and 26 feet 6 inches (8.08m) long.

Subsequently, many very large carpets were ordered, each of which must have taken many months to complete.  The carpet designed by Robert Adam in 1768 for the Saloon at Saltram House, and paid for on 2 October 1770, is 45 feet (13.72m) long and nearly twenty feet (6.10m) wide.  The Sherborne Mercury of 6 September 1818 reported the making of a carpet for the Prince Regent “which will be the largest and most splendid ever manufactured.  The principal carpet is about 42 feet (12.80m) square …. and the design is Chinese”.  This was the carpet for the Music Room at the Brighton Pavilion.  At about the same time, Samuel Rampson Whitty reported having made a carpet for the Sultan of Turkey which was 52 feet (15.85m) wide and 74 feet (22.55m) long.  This must surely have been the largest of all these early Axminsters.

These were top quality carpets, made for the rich, and most often supplied through one of the London furnishing companies.  By 1800, the majority of large London and country houses had their State Rooms carpeted, and Axminsters feature in inventories as often as imported Turkish carpets.   Warwick Castle, for example, had three (possibly five) Axminsters before 1806, and two more were supplied by Messrs Tatham & Co. in July 1817 with other new furniture for the State Rooms.  Only one now remains.

Samuel Whitty, in an advertising broadsheet, described the advantages of Axminster carpets thus:  “They are made in one piece, to any size or pattern and of any shape however irregular.  They are capable of the most beautiful designs in Flowers, Fruit, Armorial Bearings, Grotesques or any other….and their texture is extremely durable”. This was no idle boast.  The range of designs is considerable.  Seventeen or so are illustrated in colour in Sarah Sherrill’s comprehensive Carpets and Rugs of Europe and America (1996).  These include examples of the wonderful floral carpets of the 1750s and 1760s (10), as well as later architect designed carpets, for example those by Robert Adam for Harewood and Saltram, by Lewis Wyatt for the Library at Tatton Park and by Robert Jones and Frederick Crace for the Brighton Pavilion.  Shaped carpets were also woven.  The Saloon carpet at Kedleston Hall was circular, as was the carpet made for the Round Drawing Room at Raby Castle, designed by John Carr in the 1770s, and there are examples of carpets woven with shaped ends to fit semi-circular and square alcoves and apses.

But far more common than carpets designed for particular patrons are those composed from designs in the manufactory’s ‘portfolio’, some obviously made to order to suit the taste or rooms of particular clients, but many made to be sold ‘off the shelf’ through one of the London carpet warehouses.  In this account for his son, Thomas Whitty told how, immediately after the first Royal Society competition in 1757, one of the principal London carpet dealers, William Crompton, agreed that Whitty should supply as many carpets as he could make for sale in his warehouse in Cockspur Street, Charing Cross.  Other suppliers are known, for example Messrs Smith and Piercey whose carpet warehouse was in St Paul’s Churchyard and who, in 1791, supplied an Axminster carpet to John Pinney, a wealthy Bristol merchant, for his town house in George Street.

For these ‘stock’ carpets, complete main-field designs were re-used but with different colours and borders, making each carpet entirely individual.  An example can be seen in the floral carpet in the State Bedroom at Blickling Hall in Norfolk.  Here the ground colours are cream and peach, where in two other examples buff and brown are used, altering the character of the design completely.  There are also subtle differences in the borders of these three carpets such as the substitution of auriculas for frilled poppies and the use of different guards.

Another example of variation on a stock design can be seen in the carpet in the Library of Kingston Lacy in Dorset (5).  Here an Indo-Persian design is knotted on a deep blue ground with a border of palmettes, rosettes and cloud motifs.  The same main-field design, but on a raspberry-red ground, appears on carpets in the State Dining Room at Woburn and on a carpet made for Bridwell House in Devon (6).  The Woburn carpet has a border of palmettes on a cream ground while the Bridwell carpet has a beautiful flowing border of rose-coloured lotus flowers and rosebuds on a golden-yellow ground.

Even where a main-field design is repeated in the same colours, as in the crimson of the myrtle and daisy trellis design in the Red Drawing Room at Uppark and the Chinese Room at Woburn, the borders are so startlingly different (scrolling acanthus at Uppark and neo-classical linked diamonds at Woburn) that the carpets retain their individuality.  The same main-field design was used for the small rug illustrated here (4).  The border is again different and was one also used for the very large carpet now in the Dining Room at Warwick Castle.

Two interesting tripartite designs show how the manufactory ‘cashed in’ on popular designs (which may originally have been drawn by an architect for a particular room), by re-using parts of the design to create different sized carpets.  The so-called ‘Lansdowne’ design carpets illustrate this, again well written up by Sherrill.  Six examples have long been known.  Three have the complete design with rectangular end panels flanking a central square section with baskets and sprays of roses surrounding a circular centre-piece (9). The other three lack the rectangular panels.  It has always been assumed that these were originally present, but a Lansdowne design carpet sold recently at Phillips in London, which appears to be complete, suggests that the central square section of the design was woven on its own as a whole carpet.

This is certainly what happened with another tripartite design.  The full and splendid design can be seen on the carpet in the Yellow Drawing Room at Goodwood House in Sussex.  Here the central section, with striking, three tone olive coloured foliated urns surrounding a centre of massed garden flowers, is flanked by rectangular end panels of floral bands and rose-coloured spiralling acanthus.  In the example illustrated here, owned by New York dealer F.J. Hakimian, there are no end panels though the border is the same (8).  A third example uses the same central design and border but has smaller rectangular panels with acanthus only and no flowers.

Only one design seems to have been reproduced every time in identical colours and with the same border, this was the ‘large-palmette-and-leaf’ Turkish design with a hyacinth and carnation border, again well written up by Sherrill.  A dated example is the carpet bought by Sir John Soane for his Library in 1822.  At least three other identical carpets still exist, one, for example at Chatsworth in Derbyshire.

At least thirteen re-used main-field designs can now be recognised.  Border designs were also re-used, fourteen having so far been identified in this study.  One of the most beautiful appears on the magnificent floral carpet in the Double Cube Room at Wilton (12), and earlier on the Drawing Room carpet at Kedleston.  This features narcissi among a host of other wonderfully natural flowers.  The border of rosebuds and lotus flowers on the carpet at Bridwell House appears also on the carpet in the Saloon at Stourhead, while a later example of re-use can be seen in the luscious floral border surrounding roundels on the Chatsworth Library carpet (11), used also on the carpet formerly in the Bishop’s Palace in Wells, Somerset.

This study is based on just seventy carpets.  Many more re-used designs will undoubtedly be identified as more Axminsters are recorded and studied.  Alas several of the carpets mentioned by Bertram Jacobs in his 1976 book on Axminster Carpets are already abroad or their whereabouts now unknown.  One which he recorded as still in use in Crawley House, near Bedford, has lozenges containing gryphons, which sound remarkably like those at Attingham.  Another now abroad, is the very beautiful neo-classical Achamore House carpet (which uses elements from the carpet in the Peter the Great Room at Bickling) which fortunately was photographed by the owners’ grandson before it was sold.

Much more remains to be learned and understood about these magnificent carpets.  A first priority is to record as many as possible before they disintegrate or are sold abroad, as is the fate of the majority of examples coming into the salerooms at the moment.  I would welcome news of the whereabouts of any early Axminster carpet that might be available for study and eventual inclusion in an inventory of Axminsters which it is hoped will be deposited at the Victoria and Albert Museum.