Period Carpets

Floatwork Carpet for Upper Canada Village

Carpets are made using period patterns and techniques in consultation with our customers. Wool yarn can be sourced to specific breeds to create a durable and glossy carpet contributing to the period authenticity.

Upper Canada Weaving produced a floatwork carpet for Upper Canada Village in 2018.

In 19th century eastern Canada, bed coverlets in particular were made using a technique referred to as floatwork or single coverlet. This structure was used extensively by Scottish, Irish and German settlers in the 19th century Ontario. In the 1930s, a new term, overshot was used to identify this structure. The term overshot is used erroneously by textile historians and weavers to describe this structure. As this term is not found in the historical record, I refer to it by its 19th century term, floatwork. This structure was also used for carpets and horse blankets. Most floatwork patterns are woven using 4 harnesses. Floatwork creates a very decorative textile using a fairly simple loom. The structure requires two shuttles minimum. One of the shuttles is for the plain weave structure usually using cotton. The second shuttle is for the wool pattern in a weight at least three times as heavy as the cotton. If the pattern is in more than one colour, additional shuttles are required. The pattern yarn which has little structure is anchored between the plain weave structure.

Rag Carpets for Montgomery’s Inn

Upper Canada Weaving produced two rag carpets for Montgomery’s Inn in 2018 for the Traveller’s Sitting Room and for the Boys’ Room. There was a period rag carpet in the Boys’ Room that was in poor condition. Montgomery’s Inn wanted to reproduce this carpet so that the period carpet could be preserved in storage. This carpet has a limited number of colours: white, brown and pink. The predominant colour is white with random additions of brown and pink making it a ‘hit and miss’ carpet with a limited colour range. For the carpet for the Travellers’ Sitting Room, we created a more formal pattern based on a rag carpet in the collection of the Royal Ontario Museum. The checkerboard pattern was created by alternating dark and light warp threads.

Rag carpet weaving was prevalent in mid to late nineteenth century Canada. This weave structure was used primarily for carpets in English-speaking Canada and as bed coverings in French-speaking Canada. Many weavers in Canada wove rag carpets for customers. In the mid to late 19th century, rag carpets costed about 12 cents per yard.

The consumer or customer of rag carpets supplied the cotton warp and the rags. This arrangement meant that they took part in the pre-weaving production by collecting cloth from worn clothes, cutting the cloth into strips, joining the strips of cloth together, winding the joined strips into balls. The customer then brought the balls of rags to the weaver who wound them on a rag shuttle for weaving.

Rag carpets are representative of the Ontario nineteenth century household economy, small scale industry and interior aesthetic. They were also a way to get value from old clothes by making use of the household economy.

In the 19th century practice of customer involvement in textile production, visitors to Montgomery’s Inn joined the strips of fabric together. The joined strips were wound into balls and then used to weave the carpets.