FEATURES ARCHIVE

William Robinson, Director of Islamic Art and Carpets, unravels the history behind two exceptional Axminster carpets designed by Robert Adam to be offered for sale at Christie’s.

From Kelmarsh Hall to Christie’s
Kelmarsh Hall in the county of Northampton was designed by the famous architect James Gibbs (1682-1754). With a simple, relatively stark exterior and two side pavilions, the main room in the interior is the Salon, where this carpet once lay. The bold interior displays a band of meandering scrollwork around the upper walls which is today painted in white. Although the present carpet was not originally commissioned for Kelmarsh Hall, with its powerful design and soft beige tonality it looked very impressive in situ. 

From the very earliest period of weaving at Axminster, the vast majority of their carpets had central medallions as seen in the Saltram example designed by Robert Adam to be offered in our sale. However, Adam also designed a few carpets with overall field designs, the most striking of which is probably that designed in 1775 for Newby Hall in Yorkshire. The present carpet, woven in the more florid style of the second quarter of the 19^th century, has survived in remarkable, almost perfect condition to the present day, and will look as magnificent in any large salon as it has done for many decades at Kelmarsh Hall.

From Saltram House to Christie’s
In 1768 Robert Adam worked on a series of designs for Saltram House just outside Plymouth in Devon.  Part of the concept was to make carpets that mirrored the designs on the ceiling. Today the Saltram carpets which were made at the relatively local manufactory of Thomas Whitty at Axminster, are among the best preserved examples of this feature of Adam’s work. 

Having made one weaving from a cartoon, Thomas Whitty frequently saved himself having to commission another carpet from scratch and made a few further examples of the same design, often varying the colours. The present carpet is identical in design to that in the Dining Room at Saltram. In the present carpet Whitty did not even alter the colour scheme; the colours here are exactly those found in the carpet still in situ at Saltram. Bertram Jacobs, who worked on Axminster carpets in the 1960s and 1970s, even speculated that the present carpet is the original Saltram carpet which was used there until the room was converted in around 1780 from being a library, to being the Dining Room. Adding to this illustrious provenance is the fact that the present carpet has been part of the collection at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam since 1954 until it was recently restituted to the family who owned it before the second world war. 

Related Sale:
Sale 7864
500 YEARS: DECORATIVE ARTS EUROPE
8 July 2010
London, King Street