The Beauty is in the Cards

 

QUESTION: One of my passions is to visit historic houses. In many of them from the 19th century, I often see beautiful coverlets on the beds and sofas. House docents have said that women produced these coverlets on a special type of loom. I know they were done on a special kind of loom, but I forget what it was called. Can you tell me more about this special loom?

ANSWER: The unique designs of those coverlets were possible by the invention of the “Jacquard” loom. But coverlets weren’t the only types of weaving produced on this loom. By the 1850s, factories began using larger versions of the Jacquard to produce not only coverlets but two-sided carpets. Before the Jacquard loom, complex, figural designs were more difficult to produce alone on the same loom. 

Joseph-Marie Jacquard, a French weaver and merchant, patented his invention in 1804, he revolutionized how patterned cloth could be woven. His machine made it possible for complex and detailed patterns to be manufactured by unskilled workers in a fraction of the time it took a master weaver and his assistant working manually. 

A Jacquard loom wasn’t a particular type of loom but a control mechanism that’s added to a variety of looms. 

The spread of Jacquard's invention caused the cost of fashionable, highly sought-after patterned cloth to plummet. It could now be mass produced, becoming affordable to a wide market of consumers, not only the wealthiest in society.

To weave fabric on a loom, a weaver passed a thread, called the weft, over and under a set of threads, called the warp. The weaving of threads at right angles to each other  formed the cloth. The particular order in which the weft passes over and under the warp threads determined the pattern. 

Before the Jacquard system, a weaver's assistant, known as a draw boy, had to sit on top of a loom and manually raise and lower its warp threads to create patterned cloth. But this was a slow and laborious process.

The key to the success of Jacquard's invention was its use of interchangeable cards into which small holes had been punched, which held instructions for weaving a specific pattern and took over the time-consuming job of the draw boy. 

When fed into the Jacquard mechanism, fitted to the top of the loom, the cards controlled which warp threads should be raised to allow the weft thread to pass under them. With these punch cards, Jacquard looms could quickly reproduce any pattern a designer could create, and reproduce over and over.

The designer first painted a pattern onto squared paper. Then a card maker translates the pattern row by row onto the punch cards. For each square on the paper that wasn’t painted in, the card maker punches a hole in the card. For each painted square, he didn’t.

The cards, each with their own combination of punched holes corresponding to the part of the pattern they represent, were then laced together, ready to be fed one by one through the Jacquard mechanism fitted to the top of the loom. 

When the mechanism pushed a card towards a matrix of pins in the Jacquard mechanism, the pins passed  through the punched holes, activating hooks to raise their warp threads. Where there were no holes the pins press against the card, stopping the corresponding hooks from raising their threads. 

A shuttle then travels across the loom, carrying the weft thread under the warp threads that have been raised and over those that have not. This repeating process causes the loom to produce the patterned cloth that the punch cards have instructed it to create.

The Jacquard mechanism is a device fitted to a loom that simplifies the process of manufacturing textiles with such complex patterns as brocade, damask, and matelassé. The resulting ensemble of the loom and Jacquard machine is then called a Jacquard loom.

Unlike regular looms which are faster and less expensive to operate, looms with a Jacquard mechanism are slower and costlier to operate.

Threading a Jacquard mechanism was so labor-intensive that weavers threaded many looms only once. They then tied subsequent warps into the existing warp with the help of a knotting robot which tied each new thread  individually. Even for a small loom with only a few thousand warp ends, the process of re-threading could take days.

Factories had to choose the looms and Jacquard mechanisms to suit the requirements for their product. They used larger capacity machines or multiple machines which allowed greater control over bigger designs woven over the width of the loom.

The Jacquard attachment first appeared in America in the early 1820s, probably by one of the many German, English and French hand weavers who had immigrated from their native countries in Europe. These immigrant weavers tended to settle in areas with populations of their own ethnic group and near sources of good quality wool. Many brought some type of Jacquard attachment or at least the experience to use one. Some even developed their own devices based on Jacquard's idea and patented them in the U.S.

Jacquard weavers derived the patterns and motifs they used from well-known folk traditions of Western Europe. The designs of most Illinois coverlets can be traced back to Ohio and Pennsylvania coverlets. The center field patterns were either a large, repeated symmetrical motif on two-piece ones or a centered medallion on single-width coverlets. Floral motifs appeared most frequently, in the Four Lilies and Sun-burst, Four Roses, Octagonal Four Roses, Four Leaves and Four Acorns, and Four Bellflowers patterns. Star and Sunburst designs were also common.

Families in the 19th century often used Jacquard coverlets when taking long journeys in a horse-drawn carriage or stage coaches. In America, the practice of making coverlets using Jacquard looms began to fade during the fourth quarter of the 19th century. The import of cheaper materials into the U.S. became a difficult hurdle for weavers to overcome.

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The Red Carpet Treatment

QUESTION: My great grandmother left me a beautiful Oriental carpet runner. My grandmother said it is quite old, but I’m not sure by how much.  What can you tell me about antique Oriental carpets? I have no idea about its origins, pattern, and such.

ANSWER: What most people classify as Oriental carpets are actually Persian (now Iranian) or Turkish carpets. Originally made to cover the sand in the tents of nomads and to kneel on when saying daily prayers, these beautiful floor coverings have a long history.

Oriental carpets have been highly prized in the West since their first appearance in Venice in the 13th century. By the 18th century they were common in wealthier households. But relative demand was fairly small, so the production of carpets declined. During the 19th century, trade routes improved, contact with the Orient increased, and the Western obsession with the exotic grew. So Persian weavers produced great quantities of carpets for export.

Carpet-weaving is an integral part of Iranian culture and art and dates back to ancient Persia. Weavers from other countries copied the designs of Persian carpets, but Persia produced 75 percent of the world's woven carpets.

Generally, Persian carpets can be divided into three groups—Farsh/Qa-li, any carpet greater than 6×4 feet, Qa-licheh, sized 6×4 feet and smaller), and nomadic carpets known as Gelim including Zilu, meaning "rough carpet," mostly for use in tents.

Wool is the most common material for carpets but cotton is frequently used for the foundation of city and workshop carpets. There are a wide variety in types of wool used for weaving Oriental carpets, including . Kork wool, Manchester wool, and in some cases even camel hair wool.

Persian rugs have both a layout and a design which in general include one or more motifs, so it’s not unusual to find more than one motif in a single rug. The original designs act as the main pattern and the derivatives as the sub patterns. Rug experts have identified 19 pattern groups---historic monuments and Islamic buildings, Shah Abbassi patterns, spiral patterns, all-over patterns, derivative patterns, interconnected patterns, paisley patterns, tree patterns, Turkoman patterns, hunting ground patterns, panel patterns, European flower patterns, vase patterns, intertwined fish patterns, Mehrab patterns, striped patterns, geometric patterns, tribal patterns, and composites. The most common motifs include Boteh, Gul, Herati, Mina-Khani, Rosette, Shah Abbasi, Azari Kharchang, and Islimi Floral.

Persian rugs are typically laid out using one of four patterns—all-over, central medallion, compartment and one-sided. So a rug’s design can be described in terms of the manner in which it organizes the field of the rug. One basic design may serve the entire field, or the surface may be covered by a pattern of repeating figures. In areas using long-established local designs. the weaver often works from memory, with the patterns passed on within the family.

Weavers often tailored the dimensions of their carpets to suit Western needs. They produced a disproportionate number of runners—long narrow rugs originally designed to cover the sides of rooms or tents since these had special appeal to Westerners. Even so, the standards remained the same. The major carpet-weaving centers—Persia, Turkey and the Caucasus—continued to use traditional motifs and techniques, maintaining the carpets’ regional integrity and originality.

While carpets made before 1800 are extremely expensive, the antique carpet market offers some excellent buys for the beginning collector. High quality runners generally cost between $1,500 and $15,000, depending on overall design, pliability, date, and type and number of knots.

Edgar Allan Poe once said, “A judge at common law may be an ordinary man; a good judge of carpets must be a genius.” And as hard as they are to judge, they’re certainly easy to enjoy.

Beat It!

QUESTION:  My sister-in-law purchased this item at a Goodwill Store in Maine.  It measures 14 1/2 inches from end to end, and the wire part is probably 3-4 inches across. Can you tell me what it is?

ANSWER: Though what you have looks like a rug beater, it’s size says it’s a feather pillow fluffer. These are similar to carpet beaters but smaller.

From colonial times until the latter 19th century, houses has wood-plank floors and area rugs that allowed housewives and servants to easily clean them. While the floors could be swept and washed, the rugs had to betaken outdoors and beaten, thus the invention of the carpet beater, a   tool of cleanliness and torture which played a major role in housekeeping right up to the 1980s.

Most carpet beaters consisted of a handle to which the makers attached a wire or wicker pleated or knot-like loop which they often coiled or intertwined. Some had wooden handles, others did not. Early beaters had clunky designs which made it awkward for the user to beat a carpet without going into contortions. Later, makers developed more ergonomically raised handles which allowed the user to stand at an angle to beat the carpet. Shapes of carpet beaters ranged from simple arcs, triangles, rectangles, and circles to more elaborate flowers and fanciful designs like rabbits, hearts, houses, geese, and teddy bears.

Nineteenth-century country stores and later mail-order catalogs displayed a variety of carpet beaters, selling for as little as 10 cents each. Typically made of wood, rattan, cane, wicker, spring steel, or three millimeter coiled wire, the Sears Roebuck catalog offered premium versions for 45 cents each as late as their 1903 catalog. Thrift-minded rural dwellers often twisted their own beaters, attaching their creations to odd pieces of wood or pieces of old broom handles. Manufacturers such as  Woods, Sherwood and Company and the Johnson Novelty Company sold millions of them from the Civil War period to well after World War II.

Most housewives and servants beat their carpets in the backyard, limiting cleaning to good weather. Where they lived in apartments or tenements, they hung their carpets out of windows or over fire escape railings to beat them. Passers-by often had to change their route to avoid walking through a cloud of dust and dirt.

Later, companies began making less expensive beaters from rattan. These conjured up exotic locales for housewives who donned their headscarves and aprons to beat their carpets into cleanliness and their children into submission.

Housewives beat everything from carpets, rugs, clothes, cushions, and bedding, as well as their children, the former to clean them, the latter to punish them. Mothers in the Netherlands and northern Belgium used carpet beaters to discipline their children by making them bend over and spanking them on their behinds, leaving a distinctive pattern on their child's bare backside. And since they beat their rugs in their  backyards, they tended to do the same when punishing their children, thus drastically increasing the embarrassment quotient for them. This disciplinary use caused the carpet beater to become not only a symbol for good housecleaning, but also for conservative family values and child rearing, as well as a symbol of the dominant position of the mother in Dutch families.

Another side effect of the carpet beater was its ability to produce intense satisfaction in the user, especially if the person suffered from repressed rage. Wielding these wand-like devices enabled housewives to vent their frustrations on their carpets and bedding rather than their families. Perhaps that’s why there’s more family violence today with the proliferation of electric vacuum cleaners.

The modern vacuum first appeared back in the 1870s, but it wasn’t until the first decade of the 20th century that several different companies claimed they had invented the modern electrical vacuum cleaner. And while the electric vacuum cleaner took a long while to catch on, the arrival of hand carpet sweepers signaled the demise of the carpet beater, and by 1908 carpet beaters had all but disappeared from the sales catalogs. But with the onslaught of the Great Depression, carpet beaters once again gained popularity.

A variation of the carpet beater was the smaller "pillow fluffer" used to fluff feather pillows.

Carpet beaters have become a popular collectible. Before eBay, carpet beaters sold for $20-40 in antique shops and in shows. But now on eBay even the rarest ones go for just a few bucks.