“In Persia you shall finde carpets of course thrummed wooll, the best of the world, and excellently coloured; those cities and townes you most repaire to, and you must use meanes to learne all the order of the dying of those thrummes, which are so died as neither raine, wine, nor yet vinegar can staine; and if you may attaine to that cunning you shall not need to feare dying of clothe. For if the colour holde in yarne and thrumme, it will holde much better in cloth. Learne you there to fixe and make sure the colour to be given by logge wood; so shall we not need to buy wood so deare to the enriching of our enemies. Enquire the price of leckar, and all other things belonging to dying. If before you returne you could procure a single good workeman in the arte of Turkish carpet making you should bringe the arte into this Realme, and also thereby increase worke to your company.”
Hakluyt’s praise of the Persian carpets was not undeserved, for their manufacture in his time had reached a period of excellence as regards design and workmanship which it has been from time to time the aim of modern manufacturers to reproduce, as far as the conditions and requirements of the present day permit. Many of the best specimens in the museums and collections of New York, London, Vienna, and Paris are attributed to the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. When Hakluyt wrote there was in existence a carpet at the Mosque of Ardebil, in North-West Persia, which is now in the Victoria and Albert Museum. The date of this carpet is 1540, and experts agree that it belongs to the best period of Persian carpet weaving.
There is, unfortunately, no record whether the efforts of Hakluyt and the merchant adventurers of his time to obtain weavers from Turkey or Persia were successful. Carpets do not find a place among the goods to be especially sought after by their agents. As far back as the reign of Henry VIII we read of Cardinal Wolsey obtaining carpets through the Venetian Ambassador; and in that reign Richard Sheldon lent his house to a weaver named Richard Hicks, who produced among other fabrics woven maps of Worcestershire and Oxfordshire, specimens of which are still in existence.
In France, Henry IV gave assistance for the manufacture of carpets, and in 1604 there was a strong guild of carpet weavers; but it was not until the reign of Louis XIV that the manufacture was revived at Aubusson and established at Beauvais. The industry had the direct patronage of the French King, and some celebrated fabrics were made. The Revocation, in 1685, of the Edict of Nantes, which for a time had given protection to the Protestants of France, drove a large number of French and Walloon artisans into England and Germany; and the spinning and weaving were among the many industries in this country to be benefited by this influx of skilful workers.