Don’t pull the rug from under our feet
Historic carpets were once the pride and joy of our country-house collections. Now, they’re gradually being rolled up, says Wolf Burchard
Wolf Burchard on the importance of saving historic country-house carpets
Every year, we see growing crowds flocking to country houses to explore their histories and precious contents. Since 2014, the overall number of visitors to National Trust properties has jumped from 10 million to 15 million and, last year alone, The Queen welcomed 1.3 million people to Windsor Castle—300,000 more than a decade ago.
Such figures may appear negligible compared to the 7.5 million that versailles alone receives annually, but they reflect an overall trend: visitor numbers to historic houses are on the rise and, as trustees keep pushing their directors and curators to attract still more in order to ensure sufficient revenue for the upkeep of these expensive buildings, so the houses and their staff face ever growing challenges. Most important of these is the increasing wear and tear inflicted on their collections.
Textiles are among the most fragile objects in a country house, vulnerable to humidity, exposure to natural light and, of course, moths. Moreover, historic rugs and carpets remain comparatively underappreciated—within the pyramidal hierarchy of the visual arts, their place is very much on the floor. However, carpets have formed an integral part of european interior decoration since the 16th century, when imports from the Middle and Far east were extravagant status symbols.
In the 17th century, France and england began their own productions, introducing ancient skills from countries where carpets played a central role in all aspects of life. Some western weavings were designed by significant artists or architects as part of an overall decorative scheme, only a handful of which can still be seen in their original setting.
Carpets were also used as stages of power and, even today, they can be agents of political symbolism. When Time recently published a photograph of emmanuel Macron in his newly decorated office at the Élysée, it illustrated his break with French presidential tradition in furnishing it, not, as most his predecessors have done, with one of Louis Xiv’s Savonnerie carpets—ostentatious creations imbued with royal imagery—but with a contemporary Savonnerie woven to the design of New york-based cutout artist Julien Gardair.
At the White House, in turn, it’s been customary to replace the Oval Office carpet with every new President. It remains unknown as yet what the present incumbent will choose—at the moment, he’s still walking on ronald reagan’s carpet.
The challenge of displaying carpets in museums and country houses has resulted in a number of curatorial approaches, as can be seen, for example, at Windsor Castle. The Waterloo Chamber at Windsor is home to one of the largest Indian carpets ever made. It was woven by inmates at Agra jail and presented to Queen victoria in 1894.
Many will remember the incredible image of the 75 12 ⁄ ft-long masterpiece being carried out of the state rooms by no less than four dozen soldiers, as pictures and works of art were hastily salvaged during the 1992 fire. returned to the Waterloo Chamber after the restoration, it’s now covered up by a modern machine-made replica that employs fewer dyes and lacks the fine design detail and crispness of the original hand-knotted piece.
The new carpet was installed in 2015 for the bicentenary of the Battle of Waterloo, to allow visitors closer access to Thomas Lawrence’s portraits of Napoleon’s adversaries. Almost four years after the anniversary, the question arises: will Queen victoria’s carpet see the light of day again or will it remain tucked away like a medieval manuscript, to be revealed only occasionally to erudite researchers?
The zeal to increase physical access to collections is, although entirely justifiable, the historic carpet’s greatest enemy. The fact that one might be an important work of art in its own right is, it seems, often overlooked.
The Green Drawing room at Windsor is furnished with a very elaborate Axminster carpet designed by Ludwig Gruner, Prince Albert’s art advisor and scholar of the Italian renaissance, and exhibited at the Great exhibition of 1851. Here, a different curatorial approach has been adopted: visitors can see the magnificent interior lavishly decorated with Morel & Seddon giltwood armchairs and sofas, French bronzes, Sèvres porcelain and, of course, Gruner’s carpet, but they cannot enter it. A velvet rope denying access to the room is the carpet’s greatest ally.
Such a rope also surrounded the carpet in the saloon at Kingston Lacy, Dorset, but, recently, to highlight the house’s remarkable collection of pictures by rubens, van Dyck and their contemporaries, the decision was
‘Even today, carpets can be agents of political symbolism
taken to remove the carpet temporarily, so as to allow visitors into the centre of the room. However, this has denied public access to an outstanding work of art with an illustrious provenance.
The carpet was acquired by William Banks at William Beckford’s Fonthill sale in 1823, shortly after it had been illustrated in John Rutter’s Delineations of Fonthill and its
Abbey. The auction catalogue described it as a ‘matchless and MAGNIFICENT CARPET, of the celebrated Aubusson Factory, of beautiful and rich antique pattern—this splendid object was manufactured expressly for the Chateau at St Cloud, in 1814, previous to the Abdication of Buonaparte [sic]’.
In fact, although the picturesque town of Aubusson on the banks of the River Creuse did produce pile carpets, such as the one at Kingston Lacy, recent research reveals that only two were ordered by Napoleon for St Cloud—one for the bedchamber and one for the grand salon of Empress Marie-louise —and these were made by the Savonnerie manufactory in Paris.
The Kingston Lacy carpet, dated about 1810, is, like them, attributed to the designer Jacqueslouis de la Hamayde de Saint-ange, a pupil of Percier and Fontaine and principal draughtsman to the imperial wardrobe. However, it appears to have been woven by the Manufacture Piat Lefebvre in emulation of the Savonnerie technique, also known as the ‘Turkish manner’.
The most significant assemblage of ‘real’ Savonneries in this country is, by far, the encyclopaedic collection of 17th- and 18thcentury weavings at Waddesdon Manor in Buckinghamshire. Ranging from a very early Louis XIII carpet woven in relief to a remarkable state portrait of Emperor Joseph II, brother of Queen Marie-antoinette, these exceptional works of art allow us to retrace the fascinating history of the leading carpet manufacturer in the western world.
The pièces de résistance are two huge, slightly cut and altered carpets that formed part of a series of 93, all woven for Louis XIV’S 1,445ft-long Grande Galerie at the Louvre. Some of these were sold and dispersed in the aftermath of the French Revolution; examples can be found at Dalmeny near Edinburgh and Floors Castle in the Borders, the latter probably bought by the American heiress and Francophile collector Mary Innes-ker, Duchess of Roxburghe.
The one acquired by Baron Ferdinand Rothschild for the Red Drawing Room at Waddesdon has currently been replaced by a so-called eyemat, a photographic reproduction printed on a rubber surface—again, to allow visitors closer access to the pictures on the walls.
In contrast to the acclaimed history of the Savonnerie, relatively little is known about other European suppliers of handknotted carpets. Most of the archives of Exeter, Moorfields and Axminster—the three leading manufacturers in Britain, all founded in the 1750s—appear to be lost. Furthermore, many historic carpets are being rolled up, put into store and out of reach, which means that researching them becomes more and more difficult.
Among the best documented is the carpet in the saloon at Saltram, Devon, made by Thomas Whitty of Axminster in 1770. Robert Adam, whose original proposal for the carpet survives at Sir John Soane’s Museum, devised a strong design and colour scheme, to echo the plaster decoration of the ceiling and compliment the pale-blue silk on the walls and seat furniture, which was almost certainly supplied by Thomas Chippendale.
Famously, Adam and Chippendale also collaborated at Nostell Priory in West Yorkshire, where Adam designed the library in 1766. Here, he advised his patron, Sir Rowland Winn, specifically against the use of ‘matts or carpets which contract dust and is not at all good in a book room’. This is noteworthy in so far as carpets are a common feature in the grandest country-house libraries, such as at Alnwick, Chatsworth and Althorp. Even at Nostell, a library carpet was introduced in the 19th century.
Wimpole in Cambridgeshire prides itself in looking after one of the finest and largest early-18th-century English carpets of any country-house library, yet we hardly know
anything about it. Similar to the Saltram carpet, but earlier in date, it exhibits an elaborate floral pattern on a dark-chocolate ground. So far, it’s been impossible to establish who commissioned the piece or who designed or delivered it. Further research, technical comparisons with similar examples and dye and wool analysis could reveal more about its manufacture.
Another English ‘chocolate’ carpet crying out for further information can be found in the drawing room at Kedleston Hall in Derbyshire, ancestral seat of the Curzon family. Although the room was conceived by Robert Adam, stylistically, the carpet appears unlikely to have been designed by the Scottish architect. Yet the prominence given in its design to cornucopia, a feature of the Curzon coat of arms, suggests that it must have been a special commission.
Luckily, its oblong shape means that visitors can walk through the room along the window front, without stepping on the delicate woven surface.
Over the course of the past two years, conservators have painstakingly cleaned and mended the saloon carpet at Saltram, revealing its beautiful original colours. Now that the treatment is complete, difficult curatorial questions arise: is it necessary to allow greater access to the room when the entirety of the space can be admired from behind a rope? And, if so, what will happen to the newly conserved carpet?
Is an eyemat such as the one introduced at Waddesdon the answer or would a mechanical reweave, as at Windsor, be preferable? Eyemats may be a convincing temporary solution, but they gather dirt, are expensive to clean and their colours wear off with time. Reweaves of large carpets, if well made, are equally very expensive and would be difficult to store, should one occasionally want to show the original. Moreover, if rolled out over an existing carpet, damaging friction can result, so it requires perpetual monitoring.
The most straightforward solution, which can be used on any type of fragile floor, whether marble, wood or carpeted, is a good old-fashioned drugget, or runner, in a colour that matches the interior, but clearly delineates where the visitor can and cannot walk. This traditional approach can be seen working effectively in numerous country houses and should, perhaps, be more widely re-adopted.
Be sure, however, to choose a strong pile. As the legendary Edwardian hostess Mrs Greville noted at Polesden Lacey: ‘My dear, one uses up so many red carpets in the season.’
Wolf Burchard is Furniture Research Curator at the National Trust