ENGLAND, EARLY 19TH CENTURY

This beautiful carpet belongs to a group of particularly elegant designs produced by Thomas Whitty’s Axminster carpet manufactory during the reign of George III, inspired by the Rococo designs of the Royal Savonnerie carpet manufactory at Chaillot, on the outskirts of Paris. The present lot relates very closely to the large Axminster in the White Drawing Room at Buckingham Palace and also to the Herriards Park carpet now in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum (Bertram Jacobs, Axminster Carpets 1755-1957, Leigh-on-Sea, 1970, pl.7 and 51). The similarity to the Buckingham Palace carpet would suggest that originally the present carpet would have had three complete roundels encircled by joined garlands of flowers, which would have been surrounded by similar swirling acanthus at each end. The Buckingham Palace carpet is thought to have been one of the carpets ordered at the same time that the well-known Throne Room Axminster was commissioned by the Crown Prince, later George IV, for his residence Carlton House, after the visit of the Royal Family to the Axminster factory on 13th August 1783 (Bertram Jacobs, ibid., p.38). If the Buckingham Palace carpet was indeed ordered at the same time then it would seem plausible that the carpet offered here may also be of slightly earlier date.