Alan Summerly Cole

“ The art of making colours for textile-printing demands both chemical knowledge and extensive technical experience, for their ingredients must not only be properly proportioned to each other, but they must be specially chosen and compounded for the particular style of work in hand. For a pattern containing only one colour any mixture whatever may be used so long as it fulfils all conditions as to shade, quality and fastness ”

“ Schools of art at Glasgow, at Manchester, Birmingham and elsewhere in the United Kingdom have trained and continue to train designers, whose work has contributed to the formation of an English style with a new note, which, as a French writer puts it, has created a sensation in France, in Germany, in fact in all Europe and America. ”

“ But in the last-named year M. Yaucanson constructed a very ingenious, self acting loom, on which the forerunner of the Jacquard machine was mounted; he also adopted de Gennes's shuttle carrier. All early attempts to employ mechanical motive power for weaving failed, largely because inventors did not realize that success could only be reached through revolution. Mechanical preparing and spinning machinery had first to be invented, steam was needed for motive power, and the industry required reorganization, which included the abolition of home labour and the introduction of the factory system. ”

“ Gum tragacanth, or “Dragon,” is one of the most indispensable thickening agents possessed by the textile printer. It may be mixed in any proportion with starch or flour and is equally useful for pigment colours and mordant colours. When added to starch paste it increases its penetrative power, adds to its softness without diminishing its thickness, makes it easier to wash out of the fabric and produces much more level colours than starch paste alone. Used by itself it is suitable for printing all kinds of dark grounds on goods which are required to retain their soft clothy feel. ”

“ It largely grows from very fanciful dispositions of free-growing natural forms, as well as curiously curved and tenuous forms, many of which are bone-like and fibre-like in character, flat in treatment and rather thin and washy in colour, and its influence has slightly percolated into designs for pile carpets. This style, sometimes intermixed with the more robust, less fantastic and rather fuller-coloured English style, has found followers in England, America and Germany, but the bulk of the designs now used in power carpet looms seems to be mainly of Oriental descent. ”

“ In dyeing, for instance, it is sufficient, for the most part, to immerse the fabric in an aqueous solution of the dye-stuff, stirring it about constantly or otherwise manipulating it to prevent unevenness. In printing, however, the colour must be applied by special means—either by a wooden block, a stencil or engraved plates, or rollers—and thickened to prevent it from spreading, by capillary attraction, beyond the limits of the pattern or design. ”

“ One texture may be constantly above the other and connected at the selvages only, as in hose pipes and pillow slips; or at intervals a thread may pass from one texture into the other, in which event both are united, as in many styles of bed-covers and vestings. ”

“ In more modern times English tapestries woven after 1878 at the Merton works from designs by William Morris (see fig. 26) , as well as by Sir Edward Burne-Jones [11] and Mr Walter Crane, have great distinction in vigorous style reminiscent of virile medieval work. In mere technique of weaving with fine warp and weft they are outdone by the comparatively effeminate and delicate painting like fabrics now made at the Gobelins and Aubusson.
Towards the end of the 17th century as well as early in the 18th century some tapestry-weaving was carried on in Ireland. ”

“ A further and most important appliance is the “doctor”—a thin sharp blade of steel which rests on the engraved roller and serves to scrape off every vestige of superfluous colour from its surface, leaving only that which rests in the engraving. On the perfect action of this “doctor” depends the entire success of printing, and as its sharpness and angle of inclination to the copper roller varies with the styles of work in hand it requires an expert to “get it up” (sharpen it) properly and considerable practical experience to know exactly what qualities it should possess in any given case. ”

“ It was not until 1828 that the making of tapis de la Savonnerie (pile carpets of a fine velvety character) was transferred to the Hôtel des Gobelins. Here, in contradistinction to the Savonnerie, carpets are made others which, like those of Beauvais (where a manufactory of hangings and carpets was established by Colbert in 1664) , are tapis ras or non-piled carpets, being of tapestry-weaving, as also are those made by old-established firms at Aubusson and at Felletin, where the manufacture was flourishing, at the former place in 1732 and at the latter in 1737. ”

“ Tapestry-weaving as a possible cottage or home industry is practised in a few places in Ireland and England. In the Far East, China and Japan, the art, adopted presumably from western Asia, is sometimes resorted to in making silken robes and intricately figured hangings. The Japanese call their tapestry-weaving tsu-zu-re-ori. ”

“ If more than one shuttle is used it may be necessary' to feel for each, instead of alternate threads of weft. In such cases a fork is placed beneath the centre of the cloth and lifted above a moving shuttle' if in falling it meets with weft it is arrested, and the loom continues in motion, but if the weft is absent the prongs fall far enough beneath the shuttle race for a stop to act upon a lever and bring the loom to a stand. To prevent a complete wreck of the warp it is essential to arrest the loom when a shuttle fails to reach its appointed box. ”

“ During the 19th century the carpet industry was developed in government gaols. Produced in great quantities the prison-made carpets as a rule are less well turned out, and the competition, set up between them and the rugs and carpets of private factories has had a somewhat detrimental effect upon the industry generally. Older in origin than the cut pile carpets are those of thinner and flat surface texture, which from almost immemorial times have been woven in cotton with blue and white or blue and red stripes in the simplest way. ”

“ Sonping is also an important factor in the production of the best work. It clears the white parts of the goods, brightens the colours and generally improves the whole appearance of the cloth. The strength and temperature of the soap solution, the duration of the soaping and the type of machine used are all varied according to the fastness of the colours to be soaped. As in washing, the alizarine dyed colours, alizarine “ steam " reds and pinks, aniline black and the ice-colours, will not only withstand a long, hot and strong soaping, but are greatly brightened and enhanced in beauty thereby. ”

“ The patterns of the fabrics made by country weavers are usually taken by them from old rugs. But in towns where weaving is conducted under more organized conditions new patterns are often devised, and are traced sometimes upon great cardboards, on which the stitches, or knots, are indicated by squares each painted in its proper colour. In some of the Persian carpets and rugs made at Sehna, Kirman and Tabriz, the warp is of silk, a material that contributes to fine compact pile textures. ”

“ A wire terminating in a knife with a sloping blade, on being withdrawn, cuts the pile and produces a brush-like surface. The mechanism for operating the wires is placed at one end of a loom and consists of an arm which moves in and out; at each inward movement a wire is inserted, and at each outward movement one is withdrawn. In weaving tapestry carpets, and certain other fabrics, a wire and a shuttle move simultaneously, but a shuttle passes through the ground warp, while a wire passes beneath the pile. ”

“ Silk is especially adapted to discharge and reserve effects. Most of the acid dyes can be discharged in the same way as when they are dyed on wool; and reserved effects are produced by printing mechanical resists, such as waxes and fats, on the cloth and then dyeing it up in cold dye-liquor. The great affinity of the silk fibre for basic and acid dye-stuffs enables it to extract colouring matter from cold solutions, and permanently combine with it to form an insoluble lake. ”

“ Lengths or pieces of felt and other substantial material are frequently made for floor and stair carpeting, and are often printed with patterns. These of course come into quite another class technically. The technological aspects of the several branches of carpet manufacture by machinery are treated in the articles on Textile-printing and Weaving. Briefly, the products of carpet manufacture practically fall into three main divisions: (1) Pile carpets (tapis moquettes) which are either looped (bouclé) or cut (velouté) ; (2) flat surface carpets (tapis ras) as in hand tapestry-woven material ”

“ All weaving schemes are reducible to a few elementary principles, but no attempted classification has been quite successful, for fabrics are constantly met with that possess characteristics supposed to be peculiar to one class, but lack, others which are deemed equally typical. Nevertheless, since some classification is essential, the following will be adopted, namely: Group 1, to include all fabrics made from one warp and one weft, provided both sets of threads remain parallel in the finished article and are intersected to give the requisite feel and appearance. ”

“ Block-printing by hand is a slow process: it is, however, capable of yielding highly artistic results, some of which are unobtainable by any other means, and it is, therefore, still largely practised for the highest class of work in certain styles. ”

“ When the surface of a piled fabric is irregular, also when cut and looped pile are used in combination, design is no longer dependent upon colour, for in the former case pile threads are only lifted over wires where required, at other places a flat texture is formed. In the latter case the entire surface of a fabric is covered with pile, but if the figure is cut and the ground looped the pattern will be distinct. ”

“ Other floor coverings are and have been made also without such a tufted surface, and of these some are simple shuttle-woven materials plain or enriched with needlework or printed with patterns, others are woven after the manner of tapestry-weaving (see Tapestry) or in imitation of it, and a further class of carpets is made of felt (see Felt) . This last material is entirely different from that of shuttle or tapestry weaving. Although carpet weaving by hand is, and for centuries has been, an Oriental industry, it has also been, and is still, pursued in many European countries. ”

“ Roughly speaking, the operation of engraving is performed by three different methods, viz. (1) By hand with a graver which cuts the metal away; (2) by etching, in which the pattern is dissolved out in nitric acid; and (3) by machine, in which the pattern is simply indented.
(1) Engraving by hand is the oldest and most obvious method of engraving, but is the least used at the present time on account of its slowness. The design is transferred to the roller from an oil colour tracing and then merely cut out with a steel graver, prismatic in section, and sharpened to a bevelled point. ”

“ After leaving the loom all threads A are cut by pushing a knife lengthwise between the plain cloth and the pile. As each pick is severed both pieces rise vertically and the fibres open out as at B. Since the pile threads are from two to six times as numerous as those of the ground, and rise from an immense number of places, a uniform brush-like surface is formed. Raised figures are produced by carrying the threads A beneath the ground cloth, where no figure is required, so that the knife shall only cut those portions of the pile weft that remain on the surface. ”

“ Beside cut pile, many Spanish carpets of the 17th and 18th centuries have looped and flat surfaces, and bear Spanish names and inscriptions; many too are of needlework in tent or cross stitch.
Another interesting class of very fine pile carpets that has also become known comparatively recently to collectors is the so-called Polish carpets, generally made of silk pile for the ornament, which is distinctively Oriental, and of Polish carpets gold and silver thread textile for the ground, very much after the manner of early 17th-century Brusa fabrics. ”