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Item Description:

Circa 1890s William Morris & Co. "Hammersmith" Silk Rug

See similar rugs in the collection of the MetMuseum and Victoria & Albert Museum

Morris began making hand-knotted Hammersmith rugs in 1878-9. At the time there were no other manufacturers working in Britain on the scale which he envisaged for his firm. Morris had been planning this venture for some time and had been collecting historical Eastern rugs since at least the late 1850s. He had used them exclusively to cover the floors and the walls of Red House, designed for him by Philip Webb in 1859. In 1878 he set up a carpet frame in a back attic at Queen Square and with the assistance of a hand weaver from Glasgow he mastered the technique. He then installed others in the coach house and stable loft at Kelmscott House and trained them in the techniques he had learnt. By 1880 his intentions were set out at length in a circular announcing an exhibition of finished carpets and rugs.

He stated that he was attempting 'to make England independent of the East for carpets which may claim to be considered as independent works of art.'

'We believe', he continued, 'that the time has come for someone or other to make that attempt, unless the civilised world is prepared to do without the art of carpet making at its best: for it is a lamentable fact that, just as we are beginning to understand and admire the art of the East, it is fading away, nor in any other branch has the deterioration been more marked than in carpet making…The mass of goods are already inferior in many respects to what can be turned out mechanically from the looms of Glasgow or Kidderminster…
It seems to us therefore that for the future we people of the West must make our own handmade carpets, if we are to have any worth the labour and money such things cost; and that these while they should equal the Eastern ones as near as maybe in materials and durability, should by no means imitate them in design, but show themselves obviously to be the outcome of modern and Western ideas, guided by those principles that underlie all architectural art…'

In 1881 carpet-weaving was moved to Merton Abbey however the term Hammersmith rugs was retained to distinguish them from the machine woven carpets which the firm were also producing at the time. The carpets produced at Merton in the 1880s and 90s are the largest objects the firm produced and were extremely expensive to produce, costing around £4 a square yard. Along with their tapestry production they represent the most luxurious of Morris and Co.'s output.

In 1883 Morris set down his thoughts on Carpet-weaving in his wide ranging paper 'Textiles'. In it he claimed;
'…Carpet-weaving is somewhat of the nature of Tapestry…it is also (with tapestry) wholly unmechanical, but its use as a floor cloth somewhat degrades it, especially in our northern or western countries, where people come out of the muddy streets without taking off their shoes…'

'…owing to the comparative coarseness of the work, the designs should always be very elementary in form, and suggestive merely of forms of leafage, flowers, beasts and birds, etc. The soft graduations of tint to which Tapestry lends itself are unfit for carpet-weaving; beauty and variety of colour must be attained by harmonious juxtaposition or tints, bounded by judiciously chosen outlines; and the pattern should lie absolutely flat upon the ground…'

'If in our coarse, worsted mosaic we make awkward attempts at shading and softening tint into tint we shall dirty our colour and so degrade our material: our mosaic will look coarse, as it never ought to look; we shall be partners to the making of an expensive piece of goods for no good reason…'

'…now the way to get the design flat, and at the same time to make it refined and effective in colour…is to surround all or most of your figure by a line of another tint, and to remember while you are doing it that it is done for this end…If it is well done, your pieces of colour will look gemlike and beautiful in themselves, your flowers true carpet flowers.'

Only a few designs for Hammersmith carpets are known because there are no day books available to indicate which designs were made up and in what quantities. As a result they are difficult to date. Of the few examples that are known they tend to be named after the houses for which they were made, for example 'Clouds', the 'Hurstbourne', or the 'Bullerswood' carpets. Alternatively they were named after the patron who commissioned them, as in the 'McCulloch', however the designs for these carpets may have had their origins in earlier works. 

The ground and border of the carpet show strong stylistic characteristics of both the 'Holland Park' (1883) and the 'Clouds' (1887) carpets. Linda Parry observes that the Holland Park carpet 'is probably Morris's most original carpet design and shows traces of all his greatest influences: medievalism, floral realism and eastern precision.' From 1883 to around 1889 Morris had adopted a more classical and symmetrical format for his carpet designs. They displayed, as in this instance, a quartered design (where each quarter of the design is the same but reversed as a mirror) often with a central medallion.

Morris & Co often bought back items which they had manufactured previously. For example the firm purchased a carpet for 11 guineas at the sale of the contents of 'Clouds' in 1933 (now at the University of Cambridge). They also purchased lot 59, 'A Morris verdure tapestry, with deer fox and rabbits' for £150 guineas (subsequently sold to Mrs. Gubbins and sold in these rooms, 24 April 2004 for £180,000) and lot 62 'A pair of Morris & Co Tapestry Curtains' which sold for 7 guineas and are currently displayed in the British Galleries at the Victoria and Albert Museum (T.64 - 1933).

Measurements:

54x91 in.

Provenance:

A distinguished Russian Family

Condition:

Good condition with some light wear as pictured commensurate with age and slight discoloration to one edge