Britain at Work
A Pictorial Description of Our National Industries

CARPET MANUFACTURE. 321 shuttle are in their places. Away goes the loom. Driven by quick strokes from the handle, the shuttle flies to and fro, the linen warp parts solidly to let the shuttle knot its threads; but only a few threads of the worsted lift. This is the act of the cards above. Only those wires the ends of which enter a perforation in the card can act, for the others are held out of gear. Every successive card selects the requisite threads of the warp and calls them to the surface. Between linen and worsted warps long steel wires are inserted, looping up the worsted brought to the surface. The shuttle goes forward, carrying with it a wire to loop up the coming warp, and as it runs back again it withdraws a wire that has already- served. So the weaving of the carpet goes on, the pattern growing with -every beat of the slay, every double course S of the binding shuttle. When woven, the carpets are taken to the inspectors, the darner^, and the finishers, thence to the warehouse pr despatch department. The first English town in which Brussels carpets were made was Wilton. It is said that the weavers there were taught by a Frenchman smuggled over the Channel in a cask by an Earl of Pembroke, who wished to do his neighbours a good turn. Wilton weavers did not receive the Brussels carpet unintelligently. Without delay they sought to improve the fabric. One. device the Wilton men invented has given birth to a new form of Brussels, which is now known as the Wilton carpet. The Brussels carpet surface is formed of tiny loops, and by the simple expedient of fixing a little cutting blade at one end of the looping wires, that as they are withdrawn cuts the loops and leaves a fine velvet pile, the Wilton weavers made a carpet soft and beautiful. Wilton and Brussels carpets are similar in every other respect. Though possessed of the Brussels and \\ ilton carpets, British buyers turned longing eyes on the carpets of the Orient. Encouraged by the Society of Arts, the Axminster weavers began the manufacture of Persian carpets, and some time after Wilton also took up the trade. Persian carpets are built slowly THE “ SETTING ” DEPARTMENT OF THE CROMPTON AXMINSTER CARPET PLANT (RICHARD SMITH AND SONS). 41