SOMEWHERE in that strange land of antiquity whose long-slumbering secrets challenge the curiosity of archeologists, somewhere in that little-known realm peopled by the ancestors of our oldest races, is to be found the beginning of one of the world's most romantic arts, an art that even in its rudest forms was sumptuary, an art that was coeval with the first exaltation of one man above his fellows.

After starting the coachlace and counterpane establishments, Mr. Bigelow took up the problem of weaving Ingrain or Kidderminster carpets by means of power looms. It was an extremely difficult matter to produce a fabric in which the figures should match, which should have a smooth, even face and a perfect selvedge, and to do this with a rapidity beyond that of the hand-loom. The hand-weaver can, to some extent, meet these conditions by th exercise of his judgment. If the shuttle has not fully done its work, he can give the weft-thread a pull with his fingers.....By the exercise of constant vigilance, skill, and judgment, he can turn out a complete and regular fabric.

Also with the coming of the 20th century, American hotels were entering upon the period of luxurious, quietly tasteful appointments, and Bigelow carpets and rugs were selected by the best managements, even as the Bigelow-Hartford products are to-day found in the representatives hostelries, theatres, and mercantile establishments of this country. Among these hotels were the Knickerbocker, the Belmont, the Waldorf-Astoria, the St. Regis, the Astor, the Murray Hill, the New Plaza, the Gotham, the Martinique, the Fifth Avenue, and more than a scoere of others in New York city....
The members of the Union League Club, in New York City, trod in silent luxury on Bigelow carpets. Expensive brides were given in marriage by their wealthy fathers to men of wealth, to poor members of the first families, or to poorer members of foreign nobility, and knelt, etc., etc.

And here is a rug reminiscent of the crude vitality of a nomad race roaming over the cold, bleak Caucasian lands. It sings of horses and victories, of home life found in the temporary camp. Its colors are vigorous, not glowing with the languor of Turkey

The Wilton loom has the Jacquard attachment overhead....As the strands of yarn from the spools pass forward through the loom to produce the fabric, some must be raised above the others to form a pattern. The device which controls this--the Jacquard--is a sort of slatted chain of "cards."....Each card is perforated with a great many holes. The position of these holes on the cards governs the position and color of every tuft of wool that is to appear in the pattern. When the holes are all cut, the cards are laced together to form the chain, which much resembles the music roll of a player-piano, and, in fact, has much the same function. When these cards are placed in position at the top of the loom, long needles come against them, and, by passing through the holes, or by being stopped by the blank spaces, operate a mechanism which raises some of the strands of colored wool above the others. The strands that are raised form the pattern on the surface of the rug.

Aximinsters....resemble more closely than all other modern machine-made carpets the original Oriental fabrics. This resemblance arises primarily out of the almost unlimited number of colors which may be introduced into an Axminster design, and secondarily, out of the tufted character of the pile. In the Oriental carpets, of course, the tufts are inserted and knotted by hand. In the Axminster, the tufts are inserted in the fabric by machine, and bound down without being knotted.
To explain the Axminster weave in a word, the tufts are inserted row by row between the warp threads, either before or after being cut off (depending upon the specific type of loom) and are then bound down by the weft and woven into the ground of the texture. Each tuft is used on the surface to form part of the design.

Bradbury, an English authority on rugs and carpets, says of Axminsters, "Generally speaking they are far superior to Eastern and hand-made productions, and where the price is permitted to enter as a factor, they leave these primitive structures still further in the rear."

The Pullman Company has used considerably over a million yards of Bigelow-Hartford Wilton in one pattern alone during the last ten years, as well as hundreds of thousands of yards of other patterns.