Carpet Weaving in Persia

1914
Process Seems Tedious, But the Production Is Celebrated Throughout the World
Generally speaking, the carpets of India can never excel those of Persia, as the materials used in the former are not of the same superior quality as those employed in the latter country.

The wool of which many of the best carpets are manufactured is obtained from Kashmir. Sometimes carpets which are mistaken for silk are really of an extremely fine quality of wool known as "pashm." This is obtained from the goats of Kashmir and grows close to the skin, being protected by the long arid coarser wool. It is as smooth and lustrous as silk and is used for the beautiful soft shawls for which Kashmir is famous.

Peculiar methods are employed by the Indian weaver in converting his original design into a textile. Instead of working from a colored drawing or diagram, the weaver has the pattern translated on paper into rows of symbols, each of which expresses the number of stitches and the color. With this written "key" in his hand, the head weaver sits behind his subordinates and dictates the pattern to them, one row at a time, all through the breadth of the carpet. These weavers — generally quite small boys — sit in front of the warp strings and tie in the requisite number of stitches of each color as called out to them by the reader from his ciphered script.

These boys, who perform the actual process of weaving the pile, follow day by day the dictations of the head man, knowing nothing of the pattern they are preparing, but gradually building up in a mechanical way the carpet on the strings before them.

Facts Recorded in Wool

1896

"The sheep from which that wool was cut," said a wool commission man on Michigan street, "didn't have enough to eat during February and March. How can I tell? Why there is a weak spot in the wool which was made during those months. Anything which affects the growth of the sheep, whether prolonged dry weather in the summer or disease or want of food in the winter, will show in the wool just as accurately as the heat or cold is shown in a thermometer."

"The wool business," he continued, is like every other; it is full of little details that are surprising to an outsider. You ask any wool dealer who has ever handled New England wool and he will tell you the clippings of sheep from the same breed on opposite sides of the Connecticut River, one in New Hampshire and the other in Vermont, differ from each other. On one side of the river is a granite soil and on the other a limestone soil, and the difference in grass grown on these two soils makes a difference in the wool. Now, the rich black prairies of Illinois make a wool from the same family of sheep which is quite a little coarser than the wool of the sheep grown on the finer grass of Ohio and Pennsylvania. The fiber of the Illinois wool is not so clear, dense or strong as that produced in Ohio." — Free Press.

With Heaps of Wool, They Spin It by Hand

They Spin by Hand

1896

The hum of the spinning wheel is still a familiar sound in Block Island, quaint and interesting resort in summer and a miniature world in winter, in which the habits and customs are those of one hundred and fifty years ago. The island is fifteen miles off the Rhode Island shore and almost directly south of stormy Point Judith.

The heads of thirty Block Island families set sail in fishing boats the other day and pushed up the Thames River to Oakdale, where they left heaps of wool to be carded into rolls for hand spinning. The rolls will be spun and knitted into stockings and mittens for the protection of the hardy islanders against the bleak winter winds of the Atlantic.

There are times during the winter when the wind sweeps across the treeless land at a velocity of eighty-four miles an hour, and women take their lives in their hands when they venture out of doors. The isolation of the island is almost complete.

John Schofield established the first woolen mill in Connecticut near Oakdale, where the carding was done by power cards. In 1798 the Block Islanders began to send wool to the mill to be carded into rolls, and generation after generation have kept up the practice. Formerly many bags of grain accompanied the wool, and grist and woolen mills were kept running day and night, while the fishermen and farmers enjoyed themselves in the quiet Connecticut village until the work was done. — New York Herald.

Artwork -- Wool Soap For Toilet and Bath -- Advertisement

1896

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