CARPET. An ornamental covering for ' the floor. The manufacture of carpets is carried on to great perfection in this country. The principal varieties are the Brussels, Axminster, Wilton, Kidder minster, and Venetian. They are gener ally composed of linen and worsted. In some the pile is cut so as to give the car : pet the character of velvet, as in the Wil ton carpets. Kidderminster or Scotch carpets are entirely fabricated of wool.
The manufacture may be classed under two heads : that of double fabrics, and that cut to imitate velvets. The Jacquard loom has lately been used in carpet mann : met u re.
Plain Venetian carpets for stairs and passages, are woven in simple looms, pro vided with common heddles and reed. The warp should be a substance of wor sted yarn so as to cover in the weft. Kid derminsters are composed of two woollen webs which intersect each other, so as to produce definite figures. Brussels carpet ing has a basis composed of a warp and woof of strong linen thread. In the warp there is added to every two threads of linen ten threads of woollen, of different colors. The use of the linen thread is to bind the worsted together, and is notvisi ble on the upper surface. The worsted yarn, which is raised to form the pile, is not cut ; in the Wilton it is cut. The following figure and description will ex plain the construction of the three-ply imperial Scotch and two-ply Kiddermin ster carpet-loom, which is merely a modi fication of the Jacquard métier. the Brus sels carpet-loom, on the contrary, is a draw-boy loom on the damask plan, and requires the weaver to have an assistant.
Fig. A A e, is the frame of the loom, con sisting of four upright posts,. with caps and cross-rails to bind them together. The posts are about six feet high. o c, the cloth-beam, is a wooden cylinder, six inches or thereby in diameter, of suffi cient length to traverse the loom, with iron gudgeons in the two ends, which work in bushes in the side frame. On one end of this beam is a ratchet-wheel, with a tooth to keep it from turning round backwards by the tension of the web. n, the lay, with its reed, its under and tip per shell, its two lateral rulers or swords, and rocking-tree above. There are grooves in the upper and under shell, in to which the reed is Atted. E, the lied
dies, or harness, with a double neck at tached to each of the tower or card me chanisms s a, of the Jacquard loom. The heddles are connected and work with the treddles a B, by means of cords, as shown in the figure. a a are wooden boxes for the cards. a, the yarn or warp-beam. Mr. James Templeton, of Glasgow, Scotland, has taken out a patent in Eng land for an improved method of manu facturing carpets, the designs of which are produced from the weft threads, which are previously printed to produce the design or pattern. He makes velvet carpets by employing ehealle weft, previ ously printed, which weaves up into the patterns designed ; he also makes carpets by the printed weft, which work up into patterns on both sides of the carpet, like those of the ingrain carpet. The princi ple of this important improvement in carpet-weaving to do away with the Joe quard,lies in the mode of printing and preparing the weft previous to weaving. The most extensive manufacturers m the United States are at Thompsonville. They use 10,000,000 lbs. of wool, and 10,000 lbs. of flax-yarn per annum. They manufacture and Ax minster carpeting of the richest patterns, the weaving being mostly done at pre Bent on hand-looms. They have, how ever, introduced power-looms into this factory, for weaving rugs and Axminster carpets. The wool for Axminster carpet ing is first woven in a web, and afterwards cut in strips, forming what is called che nile card ; this is done on a machine, in vented by Messrs. Davidson and Parks, of Springfield, Vt., which is the first and only one of the kind, and has more than paid for itself in six months. This ma chine has over 200 hundred cutters, or knives, which are attached to a cylinder, making some 300 revolutions, and cutting full two yards of the web per minute into strips, which being a grooved cylinder, heated by having hot irons in serted within it, it is prepared for weav ing. Besides the large carpet establish ment, there is in the same village a fac tory, 150 feet by 143 on the group, and five stories high, for the manufacture of knit shirts, drawers, and fancy ginghams. This establishment has 30 sets of wool cards, and 25 or 30 gingham rooms. CARTIIAMUS. (See SAFFLOWER.)