Netherhampton Salerooms
Lot 1
Frank Brangwyn (1857-1956). An extremely rare chenille 'Axminster' carpet designed by Frank Brangwyn for Templeton & Co. of Glasgow, Scotland about 1930, signed with inwoven monogram 'FB' top right and bottom left, 12ft. x 8ft.9in. 3.66m. x 2,67m. Damaged areas, some staining at edges, foundations brittle. This carpet was one of two designed by Brangwyn for Templeton's (who had earlier commissioned designs from Charles Rennie Mackintosh among others) in about 1931-2 as part of an exhibition devoted to his work as a designer. Another example, in which the design is slightly curtailed at the sides before the onset of the outer plain grey-brown 'frame' (this frame being a consistent feature of Brangwyn's carpets as can be seen from the earlier examples he designed for Bing's La Maison de l'Art Nouveau in Paris around 1901) is illustrated in Frederick J. Mayer's Carpet Designs & Designing, 1934, colour frontispiece Mayer commented, p. 111ff., "...Messrs. Jas. Templeton & Co. of Glasgow were invited to make carpets as ordinary commercial machine-made products, additional to one or two smaller rugs which had already been woven by hand by Messrs. Morton of Carlisle. Earlier carpets of Mr. Brangwyn's, hand-tufted, had been seen some thirty years previously on show at Bing's in Paris, which were quite interesting in design and treatment, but the two he made for this exhibition show an immense advance on the earlier work in every way. The writer can recall no other case in which an outside artist has ever so completely grasped and made effective use of the possibilities of good class machine carpet weaving." Later (pp. 126-7) Mayer further comments: "Mr Brangwyn dispenses with a border and leaves the design to rest on a wide plain band of soft warm grey...It is a carpet which in many ways is worth study. The colouring is refined, dainty and subtle, and makes an excellent foundation for a room with furniture of natural untreated oak, or any light coloured wood. No less than 65 colours were specially dyed to produce it."
