Rensselaer Union and Jasper Republican, Volume 8, Number 33, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 May 1876 — Queen Elizabeth’s Carpet and a Modern Rug. [ARTICLE]

Queen Elizabeth’s Carpet and a Modern Rug.

Perhaps you have read about Queen Elizabeth’s splendid court—how the gentlemen dressed in satin and velvet, with rich lace falling over their hands and their boot-tops, and the ladies were as-line in heavy silks, Mat would almost stand alcnc, with lace and feathers and jewels in abundance; but I do not believe yott ever beard a word about the floor-corering in her palace. You would suppose (wouldn't you, now?) that she had the richest and softest and gayest of carpets; that Europe andAsia were ransacked to find carpeta worthy to be swept by the costly and beautiful dresses of her ladies ? No such tiling. Her carpets were not so nice as yours. In fact her floors were covered with green rushes, and the luxury of the royal palace consisted in having a fresh set every day; and I don’t suppose she ever even saw a carpet. Moreover, in those days carpets were nothing but small: square ar oblong pieces, what we now cal! rags; and they were made and used only by people who always sit on the floor—Persians ana Turks. When Queen Bess was an old lady the French people began to copy the Asiatic fashion of carpets orrugs; and U was more than a hundred years after that before the English followed the fashion, though they may have bought carpets of the French, when they could stop fighting them long enough to have any peaceful trade.

Since the French and the English began to make them carpets have grown into the style we are familiar with—made by the yard and cut to suit purchasers. Still we have never entirely given up the original style of Persian square carpets, which we call rags; and of lata we ana even drifting bach toward the Eastern manner of using rugs instead of carpets, altogether. And now I want to tell you how a few English girls make a thousand rugs. A monstrous feat! Well, I know U, though they do have some help before the rug is ready for use. Yet, altar all, these few girls make them just as. much as- you make your friends a pair of otippess when you cover a canvas with embroidery and. send it ton shoemaker to be soled. You never think of sharing the credit with the man of leather and waxed ends, nor with, those who made the pattern. Let me show you. A young woman sits before an embroidery-frame,, with a pile of worsteds beside her and a pattern id her hands.. Her frame has an opening about a foot square, and is not unlike the embroidery-frames on standards over which our good old grandmothers and great-aunts used to tire their backs and wear out their eyes, except that it stands up square before her, and, inntfsd of canvas, is closely filled up with fine steel bans. A curious embroiderer she is, for she has neither needle, thimble noc scissors. Instead, her implements are ft colored pattern, pile of worsteds, cot in lengths of twenty feet, and three little girls. She looks at the pattern, selects a thread of worsted for the first stitch in one corner of the picture, draws out the end and hands it to Girl No. 2-rooe of the small ones. Girl No. 2 passes the end es the worsted to another small assistant. No. 3, who stands behind the frame. Girl No. 3 fastens one end of the thread to- the steel bar of the embroidery frame, in one corner, then walks down the room five or six yards, to where there stands another tome, exactly like the first one, when she draws the thread tight and fastens the other end to the same corner of this second frame, leaving it stretched between the two. While she has beat doing this Girl No. 1 has selected the color for the next stiteh, handed it to No. 2, who passed it on to No. 4, standing on the other side of the frame. She fastened it on next to the first stitch, and walked down on bar ride to fix the other end to the second frame, as No. 8 did. By this time No. 3ia back, ready for the next thread; and so the work goes on, thread by thread, till the four girls have filled the foot-square frame with 50,000 threads, twenty feet long. - Looking at the frame, yousee the figure as it was painted on the pattern; look at the other frame, twenty feet off, and you will see the same; cut the long bundle of worsteds in any place, and, of coarse, you will still see the same pattern. But cutting into R would let the worsteds shrink up and spoil the pattern; yet they want to cut R into thin slices, with a perfect picture in each slice—as jour stick of candy that has “ no” in white letters on the end has the same useful word through its whole length, wherever you choose to break it. This is how they manage that curious feat. While the worsteds are stretched tightly between the frames, making a solid square bundle, or block, as they call it, they bind it up so tightly that every thread is in its own Elace and can’t get out of it. Then, tak* lg the ends from the steel emhroideryframe, with a sharp knife they cut the long bundle into lengths of twenty inches each.

But rags are more than a foot square, you know; so, while these four girls have been embroidering one square foot of the pattern, other sets of four girls, at other frames, have been preparing other square feet. When all are done and cut into blocks and set np on enda together, they form the whole picture of the rug, whethit he a lion, natural enough to roar, a tijpr in his native jungle, or a view in the Jr the rug is to be two feet wide and eight feet long, which is a very common size, there are sixteen of these wonted blocks; and they are set up together in a box, just &e kue of the future rug. Thebox is on wheels and has a movable bottom, so it can he made as deep eras shallow as desired. The blocks are arranged. The box Is rolled on, to an elevator, and takes a journey to the, basement, where them is a

a turd one is given. Before tills dries • the sticky mass and pressed carefully nod evenly down, nibbed andscraped till every n Is a curious performed lyu in the shape of a whet? diameter It turn very rapidly, by steam. And is like n circular saw, only the edge Is smooth like n knife, and ft does not work standing up, like a carriage wheel, but horizontally or as if the wheel lay on its side. The rug-box, with the canvas glued on to the top, Is first screwed up at the bottom till enough of the worsted is above the edge of the box to make the thickness of a rug, and then attached to machinery and drawn up to the whirling knifs, which slices off a rug as you would slice a bit of apple. As It cuts in the rug is drawn* up over the knife by books, and in a moment there is a bright rug, with its strong canvas hack, and an equally bright-faced picture on top of the rug-box. Then, of course, the box goes back to the rubber-glue, and the same thing ia done over—glue on another back and slice off another rug. And so they go on screwing up the bottom and slicing off rugs till the boxes are empty, and the whole twenty feet of worsted embroidery has become a thousand rags.

Now you can see why rugs made in this-way are so much cheaper that the raised worsted embroidery they imitate and which our grandmothers made. You have, no doubt, seen bits of this oldfashioned work carefully preserved on faded foot-stools or chair-backs. The process was exactly the same—copying a colored pattern in threads of wool; but our patient ancestors worked mouths over one small pattern, and had but one copy when done, while these girls, though pet. haps working as long, made a thousand copies of their pattern. The originals of these rags are made by the best English artist, painted in oils, when inferior workmen copy them, inch for inch, rule them into small squares, and finally reduce them to foot-square patterns. When done, they are wonderfully good copies of the original oil painting. This lately-invented week ia called wool mosaic, and it is quite as wonderful in its way as the marble and stone and glass mosaics tiiat we bring so carefully across the ocean and keep among our treasures. —Olive Thorne, in If. T. Independent.