NOTABLE CARPETS.

Observer, Volume XXXIX, Issue 43, 28 June 1919, Page 9

NOTABLE CARPETS.

SHOWN BY SMITH AND

CAUGHEY, LIMITED

Always noted for their beautiful selection of carpets, Messrs. Smith and Caughey, Ltd., have in the past years shown lovers of "floor pictures" a great many fine specimens of the rug-maker's art.

Even in the stress and tumult of war, artistry is not suppressed, and two notable carpets just imported by the firm will attract wide attention from connoisseurs and all lovers of the beautiful in modern furnishings-

The first is a notable Chinese rug, symbolising the Renaissance — that awakening movement which the Western world has watched and expected for years. Chinese art goes back to ancient time, before our great Empire had its being and tradition and training to enable its artists to produce requisite effects. This rug design was the subject of competition throughout the Empire, and the most noted artists competed. A young artist of Pekm won the prize. As is natural, while embodying the symbols of the ancient dynasties, he encircled his design with the Great Wall of China, to repel outside interference, as that wall kept out the robber bands of old. Then, inside this sanctuary, with birds of gorgeous plumage and homes of artistic beauty decorating the landscape, he painted the picture of peaceful beauty that his artistic soul saw in the reincarnation of the Chinese soul and spirit. It is a picture full of meaning, the message that down the ages poets and artists have always striven to express, by the written word, whether in bronze or marble, on canvas or clay.

The next is a rug which wafts us to the Holy Land, and brings to us a correct representation of v- that magnificent temple builded by the great King Solomon - and his artificers, under the no less famous worker in metals, Harim Abbi, placed at the Israelitish King's disposal by Hiram, King of Tyre. : Here we see the magnificent chamber sacred to the priests of the temple. We see the richly-adorned walls, the semi-human symbolical figures of the friezes, and the, cherubs, supposed to be the choristers of. Jehovah, the sacred vessels and the mystic seven-brancHed candelabra. Above all, the wonderful ceiling, the whole perspective -so alluring that the beholder thinks he can walk forward as into a building. The noted archaeologists, Chipiez and Perrot, prepared the drawings from which the design was made, so that it is no fanciful picture, but the most authoritative sketch of that holy place which forms a symbol of perfection to Jew and Gentile alike.

Messrs. Smith and Caughey, Ltd., are making a special window display of these two notable carpets, and all who see them will deem the time well spent.