A REGENCY AXMINSTER CARPET

In 1775, Thomas Whitty established his carpet manufacturing workshop at Axminster in Devon. His success was almost immediate; Whitty’s Axminster carpets were highly regarded by the Society of Arts and were awarded the Prize offered for carpet weaving in 1757 (shared with Thomas Moore of Moorfields, 1758 (shared with Peter Parisot of Exeter) and 1759 which he won outright. Leading architectural designers including Robert Adam and James Wyatt turned to Whitty to create some of the own designs. Even the Prince of Wales became a patron, commissioning a number of carpets. The full achievement was acknowledged in 1783 with the royal visit of George III to the workshop.
The present carpet has an abundance of naturalistically drawn small floral sprays which are strewn across the field in an apparent haphazard manner, less typical of the more controlled Neoclassical carpets designed by Robert Adam and others.
A similar carpet with a nearly identical pattern of strewn flowers on a navy-blue field is in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (see B. Jacobs, Axminster Carpets, Leigh-on-Sea, 1970, pl. 6).