Illustration: Matthew Digby Wyatt. Carpet design, 1867.
In 1867, at the Paris Universal Exhibition, the London based carpet manufacturer Turberville Smith displayed a number of carpet designs including this one by the English architect and designer Matthew Digby Wyatt.
Turberville Smith were by no means newcomers to the exhibition circuit as they had displayed carpets at both the 1851 and 1862 exhibitions in London. At the Paris Exhibition, Turberville Smith carpets were warmly received and were considered to be one of the best displays set up by the British contingent.
This particular design by Wyatt is an interesting example of the combining of a number of interests and ideas that the architect and designer had formulated over the previous decade and more. Wyatt, along with his friend Owen Jones, was a vociferous design reformer who strongly believed that realism within decorative pattern work was an anathema to the genre. He was particularly critical of carpet design and felt that many of the three-dimensional tricks played by carpet designers and manufacturers, who seemed to him at least, to spend both time and energy trying to produce ever more realistic floral representations, was in fact detrimental to the long history and traditions of carpet design.
Interestingly, and perhaps fundamental to Wyatt's thinking as regards carpet design, was the fact that on a number of occasions throughout the 1850s, Wyatt had come into personal contact with the decorative arts of India. In 1851, he oversaw much of the construction and furnishing of the Crystal Palace. He was particularly impressed by many of the hand crafted exhibits brought directly from India. So much so that when his seminal Industrial Arts of the Nineteenth Century was published a couple of years after the Great Exhibition, in 1853, the book was to include examples of Indian decorative work including jewellery, lacquer work and metalwork. In 1856, Wyatt was appointed as a surveyor to the East India Company when he again came into contact with both Indian hand crafts and, perhaps more importantly, some of the theories behind decorative art production in India.
It is no surprise therefore, that in some respects at least, Wyatt's carpet for the Paris Exhibition was designed with some of the formal parameters of Indian decoration. Some of the design work incorporated by Wyatt for this particular carpet could well have been used for both traditional Indian carpet and wall decoration, and while the overall decorative effect remains within the general confines of European decoration and pattern work, there is still a strong emphasis on non-European structures of design.
As to what happened to this particular carpet after the Paris Exhibition, I have no idea. Whether Turberville Smith sold it, or kept it in storage, is unclear. However, what is clear is that this is an important example of the work of one of the nineteenth century's most important design reformers and is an example of what Wyatt himself was trying to make clear to both designers and manufacturers, but also just as importantly, to that of retailers and the public at large.
Further reading links:
The Art of Illuminating: As Practised in Europe from the Earliest Times Illustrated by Borders, Initial Letters, and Alphabets
The Byzantine and Romanesque Court in the Crystal Palace, Described by M.D. Wyatt and J.B. Waring
Fine Art, a Sketch of Its History, Theory, Practice, and Application to Industry, a Course of Lectures
The History, Theory, And Practice Of Illuminating (1861)
Notices Of Sculpture In Ivory: Consisting Of A Lecture On The History, Methods, And Chief Productions Of The Art (1856)
Fine art
The Mediaeval Court In The Crystal Palace (1854)
The Italian Court in the Crystal Palace (Crystal Palace Library Guides)
Matthew Digby Wyatt: The First Cambridge Slade Professor of Fine Art: An Inaugural Lecture
