AN AXMINSTER CARPET

MID 19TH CENTURY

Details

AN AXMINSTER CARPET
Mid 19th Century
The toffee-brown field with an overall dark brown lozenge flowerhead lattice overlaid in each spandrel by scrolling brightly colored acanthus divided by rosette roundels issuing from the large central rose-pink roundel with four floral swag light brown lunette panels around a central fan light roundel, a deep bottle-green cross panel at each end containing scrolling acanthus, in a dusty pink meandering acanthus leaf border between oak-leaf and cusped leaf stripes, outer seed-pearl and plain stripes, part of one border rejoined
Approximately 21ft. 8in. x 15ft. (658cm. x 457cm.)

Lot Essay

Designed in the George III 'antique' fashion promoted in the 1760's by the court architect Robert Adam (d. 1792), its pattern derives from Adam's stuccoed Library ceiling (later the Dining Room) invented in 1769 for Saltram, Devon, but with floral festoons replacing the poetic scenes painted in the ceiling lunettes (B. Jacobs, Axminster Carpets (hand made) 1755-1957, Leigh-on-Sea, 1970, fig. 4). No design exists for the carpet, as the drawing of the finished ceiling provided the pattern for the carpet, commissioned for the room around 1780 by Thomas Wittey (d. 1792) of Axminster.(See E. Harris, The Genius of Robert Adam, London, 2001, p. 240 and fig. 356.) Another carpet of the present pattern is in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (ibid, fig. 29). Another closely related carpet was formerly at St. Giles's House, Wimborne St. Giles and sold by the Earl of Shaftesbury, Christie's London, 26 June 1980, lot 98, (Ibid, fig. 32.)

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