ENGLAND, MID 19TH CENTURY

Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the majority of large hand-woven Axminster carpets were designed around prominent central medallions. Occasionally an overall design was woven, one of the most famous is that designed by Robert Adam for the Tapestry Room at Newby Hall in Yorkshire (Sarah B. Sherrill, Carpets and Rugs of Europe and America, New York, 1996, pl.198 and 199, p.193). The naturalistic floral design of our carpet, however, feels much more in keeping with that of a related example displayed in the large dining room in the Governor’s Palace of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation (Mildred B. Lanier, English and Oriental Carpets at Williamsburg, Virginia, no.9, pp.26-7). Both carpets feature designs woven on chestnut-brown fields with repeat blossoming flower-heads. The Rococo design of scrolling acanthus leaves may well have been inspired by the arrival of Turkish carpets from Ushak in Western Anatolia that bore similar patterns of bold stylised flowers and palmettes. The individual cartouches in the border are also closely related to the ‘Transylvanian’ rugs of the seventeenth century that were most likely woven in Ushak and produced for the export market, a related example was formerly in the Evangelical Church of Valea Viilor, Wurmloch inv.21 and now in St Margaret’s Church, Mediaş (Stefano Ionescu, Antique Ottoman Rugs in Transylvania, Rome, 2005, cat.143, p.139).