AN ANCIENT ART

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29830, 24 May 1962, Page 8

AN ANCIENT ART

The art of carpet-making goes back some hundreds of years but it is only in the last few hundred years that carpets have been made in Western countries and only since the development of the machine that they ceased to be the prerogative of Royalty and the rich. There is record of carpets in ancient Greece, but it was in the East that they first became widely used; and the name of Persia will always be associated with the beauty of carpets. When they were first

taken to Europe from the East they were used as rich coverings for beds and tables. Straw, dried rushes and sand were still used on the floor. The French first organised the manufacture of carpets, and descendants of the French weavers, settling in England in the reign of James 11, established a factory in Wilton. Kidderminster, the birthplace of the Leader of the Opposition (Mr Nash), was one of the earliest English towns to manufacture carpet There was a factory there in 1735. The invention of the

Jacquard loom in France in 1801 meant that patterned designs could be made mechanically, and the invention was applied to England in 1825. The general adoption of power looms during the latter half of the nineteenth century greatly reduced prices and brought carpets within the reach of a much larger public. Modern carpets retain many of the characteristics of the early skin mats, tough, flexible back with its Common to both is the tough, flexible back with its upright pile of animal fibre, rich in colour.