Hammersmith Rugs: A William Morris Legacy

​Museum Textile Services had the pleasure of conserving two William Morris rugs from the Preservation Society of Newport County that date to the 1880s. William Morris was the champion of the British Arts and Crafts Movement. He designed and created everything from wall paper to textiles in a way that subverted the fast-paced industrialist ideals of the Victorian Era. William Morris was deeply inspired by medieval aesthetics. He and architect Philip Webb built Red House in the emerging Neo-Gothic style.

Exterior of Red House. Photograph courtesy of Jacqueline Banerjee.

The front hall of Red House.

Upon Red House's completion in 1860, Morris desired to furnish the home in the same aesthetic as its architecture. Industrial-made goods were of low quality and lacked medieval inspiration, marked by simplified curvilinear shapes and florals. Morris, with his wife Jane Burden and other friends in the arts circle, decorated the interior of Red House with hand-painted murals and hand-stitched embroideries. This art collective ultimately inspired Morris to create the company Morris, Marshall, Faulkner, & Co. in 1861, which specialized in bespoke decorative arts in the Neo-Gothic style.

Deeply inspired by the quality and design of rugs from the Middle East, Morris and Co. began producing hand-knotted rugs in the 1870s. After producing small test squares, a larger operation was set up at his new home in Hammersmith, which dubbed the term Hammersmith rugs. Warp threads of worsted or cotton were stretched between two beams. Six women would hand knot wool yarns and were expected to complete 2 square inches a day with roughly 25 knots per square inch.

​The two Hammersmith pieces sent to MTS are an area rug and a runner. The area rug contains two floral medallions within a rectangular field, surrounded by a series of borders. The runner features a central red and pink field with a wide green foliate border edged in pink and red. 

Area rug before conservation. Image by MTS. Courtesy of PSNC.

Detail of runner. Image by MTS. Courtesy of PSNC.

Both rugs have cotton warp and alternating cotton and jute weft. The warps form ornate knotted fringe on the short ends. The pile of both rugs is wool, and there is a separate wool binding edge attached to the longer sides of each rug. The wool pile is has survived the best of all the materials. The colors are still vivid and there are only losses in areas where the other elements have failed, such as the binding edge. The cotton warps are sound, though there are some tears and losses to the ornate knotted fringe. The primary condition issue is the structural failure of the jute weft, which make both carpets vulnerable to splitting in the long direction.

Another Hammersmith rug with hand-knotted fringe (c.1880s). Courtesy of William Morris Gallery.

MTS conservators stabilized the slits using three different techniques, depending on the severity of the damage. Small slits were closed with a traditional whip stitch using a cotton-polyester thread. Longer slits were mended with tabby reweaving, where the repair thread was passed over and under alternating warps to restore a network of stability while closing the tear. Where groups of splits were most severe, such as along the middle where the area rug had been folded, we employed patches of cotton duck to which we made our tabby and slit stitching. In this case we had to work with one conservator standing over the rug on tables and another conservator lying on the floor beneath a gap in the tables. Losses to the binding edge were stabilized with new cotton warp yarns and Appleton wool yarns from England. All four corners of the area rug were also supported with cotton duck patches to prevent future damage. Finally, the fringe edges of both rugs were reinforced by floating cotton/polyester thread through each knot on the reverse.

Area of weakness before conservation. Photo by MTS. Courtesy of PSNC.

Area of weakness after stabilization. Photo by MTS. Courtesy of PSNC.

The two William Morris Hammersmith rugs will be displayed this spring at the Breakers, one of the most famous of the Newport mansions run by the Preservation Society of Newport County.

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​Morgan Carbone has a BA in Art History from Grinnell College. She recently finished her Master of Arts degree in Fashion and Textile Studies at the Fashion Institute of Technology. Morgan's interests include lace knitting and cats.