Carpet Cool!

I loved this hummingbird carpet

showing typical Kidderminster carpet with double weave

Saturday 12th February brought the long awaited and several times cancelled talk from Dr. Anthea Harris-Fry from the Kidderminster Carpet Museum.

She explained that the museum had been set up 10 years ago with funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund. They were allowed enough money to run the museum for 3 years and since then they have been largely staffed by volunteers. Anthea has been there since 2019 and she came partly because of her keen interest in history.

We were treated to a short history of carpets with pictures shown to us on a screen. Surprisingly carpets were not meant to be walked upon in the past as they were much too precious. A painting by Holbein shows Henry V111 with a carpet draped over a table. It is a Persian carpet of vivid colours. Similarly a painting by Teerlinc shows Elizabeth 1 standing on a carpet of rush, so we know that only very wealthy and high status people would have carpets in those times.

From about 1735 there was a market for carpets in Kidderminster. At that time carpets would be hand made in flat weave, made in a similar way to how we weave on our hand looms at home today. Carpets were reversible and tufted soft carpets were not made until the 19th century. They would have been small, hard wearing and made in small geometric patterns, used for stairs and hallways.

From 1857 carpets were made on power looms after America brought a new steam loom to show at the Great Exhibition in 1851.

We learnt about William Morris and his company designing carpets in the late 19th century and onwards and then lots more about modern carpets and contract carpets. Contract carpets are big business now and we saw lots of examples with some very modern and spectacular designs. They are designed for a specific space such as cruise liners or hotels.

One fact I found interesting was that Wetherspoons have a different carpet in each of its pubs - each one is unique and is designed to reflect something local. Having been in the local Wetherspoons a few times at Kings Norton after one of the walks I lead, I was surprised that I had never noticed the carpet! I was told by Sarah that there are boats on the carpet so I will definitely look down next time I go there.

Sadly there are are only 2 carpet making factories left in Kidderminster now. One of them, Brockways, makes carpets from British Herdwick wool, which is good to know. 

Thank you Anthea for your very interesting talk, any mistakes above are mine, so I apologise in advance! I am inspired to go and visit the carpet museum now and see all these carpets. I know some members have already visited and found it fascinating.

Update:
I have now visited The Museum of Carpet - It was definitely worth it! I also had one of my train adventures and found it was very easy to get to Kidderminster. The best part of the visit was seeing and hearing the carpet machines in action and listening to Jed talking about the Axminster loom. A word about Jed- he worked on carpet machines in Kidderminster for all his working life and now he has returned as a volunteer at the museum. He is a mine of information and anecdotes about carpets and machines. I also watched the Wilton loom working. It was very loud and I would be surprised if the factory workers didn't have hearing loss as they were given no ear  protection until the 1970s. I watched how they worked and eventually worked out the difference between the 2 types of carpet. I won't attempt to explain as the best way to understand is to see for yourself. The 3rd kind of loom was the Dobby Loom and this makes flat weave carpet in a similar manner to my Louet 4 shaft at home. It was set up for double weave and this was interesting as I am going to try this myself - hopefully!
(https://museumofcarpet.org/)


​Wendy

Axminster loom

Jed and the Axminster loom

100s of spools that take several days to load

Wilton power loom

Dobby loom with double weave

Dobby loom showing 4 shafts