Axminster Carpets A la Turca

Shown Carpet (Ottoman) with  a field of cintamani motif, c. 1550, Cairo, Egypt, wool, 79 x 48 inches (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

 "The popularity of what we call oriental carpets—pile-woven carpets from the Islamic world—in Europe from the fourteenth century onward is reflected in the frequent depiction of oriental carpets in European paintings. Indeed, European paintings are a primary source for scholarship on early carpets, and many groups of Islamic carpets from the Middle East are today called by the names of European painters who depicted them: Lotto, Holbein, Ghirlandaio, Crivelli, and Memling are among the European painters whose names are now used to describe certain groups of carpets woven in Ottoman Turkey." Walter Denny

Ottoman court carpet, floor covering handwoven under the earlier Ottoman sultans of Turkey. Extremely fine, handsome carpets—of wool pile on a foundation of silk or wool, having floral patterning, often with schemes of large or small circular medallions—and comparable prayer rugs were made for the court, possibly at Bursa in the 16th century. Coarser, all-wool examples were made in Cairo after the conquest in 1517 and probably also in Anatolia. In due course many of these carpets were exported to southern Europe, where they have been preserved. Although mentioned in old records, all-silk examples do not seem to have survived.
Mavi Boncuk | 

Axminster | Axminster Carpets Ltd are an Axminster, Devon based English manufacturer of carpets, particularly the same-named Axminster carpets.

Whilst visiting Cheapside Market, London, Devon-based weaver Thomas Whitty (1713–1792) was impressed by a large Turkish carpet he saw. On his return to Axminster, he used his skills to work out how to produce a product of similar quality. After several months work he completed his first carpet on midsummer's day 1755.

Thomas Whitty began making Axminster method carpets in 1755. These original Axminster Carpets™ could be found in Chatsworth House and Brighton Pavilion as well as being bought by King George III and Queen Charlotte, who visited the factory.

Whitty's carpets, looking much like horizontal-tapestries, became the benchmark for wealthy aristocrats to have in their country homes and town houses, between 1755 and 1835. The company produced Axminster carpets for: the music room of the Royal Pavilion, Brighton; Chatsworth House; Powderham Castle; Saltram House; and Warwick Castle. King George III and Queen Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz purchased Axminster carpets and also visited the factory.

182 years later, a carpet manufacturer called Harry Dutfield was on a train where he met a vicar from the West Country who told him that carpets had not been made in Axminster for a while due to a disastrous fire that had destroyed the factory. The germ of an idea was born and in 1937 the decision was taken to re-launch carpet manufacturing in the town of Axminster.

Thomas Whitty

This was the renaissance of ‘Axminsters from Axminster’. Axminster Carpets™ continue the proud tradition of making the finest carpets in the world. Carpets from Axminster can be found in royal residences, in some of the finest hotels in the world, in train carriages, on the aircraft of major global airlines and in thousands of discerning homes up and down the country.

To celebrate 250 years of carpet weaving in Axminster a commemorative rug was produced. Re-enacting history, the carpet was paraded by the weavers of Axminster Carpets through the town to the Minster Church where it was blessed by the Bishop of Exeter and then presented to the Earl of Devon, who was representing the Queen. It is now at Clarence House, the home of HRH The Prince of Wales.

Today, Axminster Carpets™ is still weaving beautifully designed carpets in the Devon town of Axminster for the Royal Household, stately homes, luxury hotels and homes around the world.

In 1800, the company made a 74 feet (23 m) by 52 feet (16 m) carpet for Mahmud II, the Sultan of Turkey, known today as the most famous Axminster Carpet of all. Depecting a blazing sun, moon and a whole constellation of stars, it cost £1,000, an equivalent in excess of £1 million in 2010's prices. Carried out of the factory by thirty men from the local Congregational Church, it was initially placed in the Topkapi Palace. It was then moved to the Defterdar Palace, where it became the property of Esma Sultan, the daughter of Sultan Mustapha III.

Ziegler | Ziegler (Zeigler) is the name of a design rather than an actual city or tribe. Ziegler design rugs are sometimes known as Chobi rugs or Peshawar rugs. A German company based in Manchester (England), Ziegler and Co. commissioned the development of the original Ziegler rugs back in 1883. Using leading designers and master weavers from Iran and Europe, Ziegler and Co. managed to create a design using softer palettes than those typically found in Iran. Ziegler rugs were designed with the western market in mind and fit perfectly into almost any home. Based on a softer version of the Sultanabad design their muted colours using vegetable dyes and simple, yet striking pattern fit well with modern neutral colour schemes and both contemporary or traditional furniture.

Savonnerie | The Savonnerie manufactory was the most prestigious European manufactory of knotted-pile carpets, enjoying its greatest period c. 1650–1685; the cachet of its name is casually applied to many knotted-pile carpets made at other centers. The manufactory had its immediate origins in a carpet manufactory established in a former soap factory (French savon) on the Quai de Chaillot downstream of Paris in 1615 by Pierre DuPont, who was returning from the Levant.

Under a patent (privilège) of eighteen years, a monopoly was granted by Louis XIII in 1627 to DuPont and his former apprentice Simon Lourdet, makers of carpets façon de Turquie ("in the manner of Turkey"). Until 1768, the products of the manufactory remained exclusively the property of the Crown, and Savonnerie carpets were among the grandest of French diplomatic gifts.

The carpets were made of wool with some silk in the small details, knotted using the Ghiordes knot, at about ninety knots to the square inch. Some early carpets broadly imitate Persian models, but the Savonnerie style soon settled into more purely French designs, pictorial or armorial framed medallions, densely massed flowers in bouquets or leafy rinceaux against deep blue, black or deep brown grounds, within multiple borders.

Bezazel| Antique Bezalel carpets were produced in the earlier twentieth century as part of a new art school for Jewish immigrants in what was then British-ruled Palestine. Founded by Boris Schatz from Bulgaria in conjunction with Zionist pioneer Theodore Herzl, the school and its workshop in Jerusalem were intended to provide an artistic outlet for Jewish artists, and to encourage them to fuse their European traditions with those of their oriental homeland. True to this inspiration, the Bezalel rug workshop drew upon a wide range of Oriental rug designs, while often exploring folk art traditions from the west as well, but always adhering to a high artistic and technical standard.

Bessarabian | Bessarabian rugs and carpets are the commonly given name for rugs in pile and tapestry technique originating in Russian provinces as well as Ukraine and Moldova during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.1 Some scholars will classify flat-woven carpets as Bessarabian, while referring to knotted-pile carpets as Ukrainian.2 They are predominantly from an area corresponding to modern Bulgaria and Romania. Produced under late Ottoman rule, they stand right on the cusp of European and Oriental carpet weaving. Some pieces, in particular the flat-weaves, are woven with the distinctive Bessarabian palette in the tradition of kilim rugs of Anatolia.