CARPET, in the manufacture of cloth, is a species of woollen stuff, made of variegated colours, and used for the floor cloths of rooms.
The manufacture of carpets, we may reasonably con clude, originated in Asia, from whence most of our know ledge of the manufacture of cloths of almost every de scription appears to have been derived ; and to this day, the finest and most expensive of the ornamental kinds arc distinguished by the name of Turkey carpets. They are now, and have long been, manufactured both in France and Italy, and those used in Britain, of internal manufacture, are equal both in fabric and design to any imported. In England they are generally called Wilton carpets, from the county which is the chief seat of that and the other finer branches of the woollen manufacture. Some manufactures arc, and have been long established in Scotland, of which Stirling and Kilmarnock are the chief scats, but they are generally confined to the coarser and low priced kinds.
Carpeting possesses this peculiar property, differing from almost every other kind of cloth, that it consists of two distinct webs, woven at the same time, and firmly joined together by the operation. I I ence arises that com mon effect, that on the two sides of a carpet the form of the pattern is the same, hut all the colours are reversed. The most accurate idea that can be formed of the tex ture of carpets, is to suppose the warps of two distinct webs to be placed in the same loom, and in contact with each other, the one being above and the other below ; and that the weaver, in forming cloth, is to intersect each web with one thread of woof alternately. Were this pro cess followed strictly, as in weaving plain clod-, two se parate webs would be produced, and the operation would, of course, be much more clumsy and tedious than the common mode. Again, if we suppose that a carpet woven of double cloth were formed of lineal stripes by the warp, two distinct fabrics of cloth would be pro duced ; but these would be intersected and joined by pa rallel straight lines, extending from one end of the web to the other, at distances equal to the breadth of the re spective stripes. lf, further, we suppose these stripes
to be reversed at pleasure, and that this should be so effected as to form the whole into a succession of squares, the appearance of a tesselated pavement, or what archi tects and builders denominate Mosaic work, would be the result. In this the junction of the two fabrics would be more intimate than in the first, and the greater the variety of pattern, where the figures are small, the inti macy is still increased, because the webs are joined at a much greater number of points. From this a very use ful deduction may be gathered by those who study dura bility more than ornament in the purchase of a carpet, always to select one where the figures are small, for in this case the two fabrics arc always much closer inter woven than in those where large figures upon ample grounds are represented.
In an economical view, considered comparatively with other fabrics, the application of the principle of fabricating double cloths, seems judicious in various re spects, when applied to carpets or floor cloths. They must possess more warmth ; they may be reversed at pleasure, thus exposing alternately two surfaces dif fering in the arrangement of colour, although similar in pattern ; and they are susceptible of more variety of figure than could be produced so cheaply on any single cloth.
In Biting such an account of this sort of cloth as our limits will admit, we must confine ourselves wholly to the operation of weaving the cloth in this article ; for the ether opt rations, although the whole are generally prac tised within the same manufactory, belong to the various processes for preparing and dying woollen yarn, and will be found under the respective articles relating to these branches of the manufacture.
The carpet manufactory, as practised in every part of Europe where carpets are made, may be reduced to two kinds.