Axminster, like other carpet fabrics, has tended to develop in the direction of wide seamless goods; and this is a tendency that will be worth watching, leading as it does towards the evolution of the ideal carpet—a machine-made knotted fabric. Ideal, that is to say, in the sense that the knotting of a tuft on to a groundwork of warp and weft is the best way of putting a carpet together, and having regard for the facts that we live in a mechanical age; that we cannot afford time or money to make our own carpets by hand; and that we ought not to buy foreign hand-made carpets. Experiments in mechanically knotted carpets have continually been made, and definite progress has been won in recent years; but the technical difficulties are considerable, and it will be interesting to see whether a carpet of so exceptional a weave can be put on the market, except at a price comparable only with that of a hand-tufted fabric. Meanwhile, the seamless tufted Axminster, as it is now made in two or three forms, with tufts as securely fastened for all practical purposes into the body of the fabric as if they were knotted, holds the field as the nearest approach to the ideal, and is deserving of a far larger measure of support from the British consumer that it has enjoyed hitherto. CHAPTER VIII CHENILLE CHENILLE Axminster carpeting possesses one or two features which differentiate it sharply from other kinds of carpet. It is the product of two distinct processes: the formation of the chenille fur, and the weaving of that fur, which is the weft, into a carpet. It is, in fact, about the only cut-pile carpet fabric in which the pattern is distinctively formed by the weft; for in almost all other makes the weft only performs the function of combining with the chain to form the woven fabric. Taking first the manufacture of the fur, the dyed yarn, which is normally a single woollen, about 55 yards per ounce, is wound on cops which fit inside the shuttles for the weft looms. Before starting to weave, the weaver will have a supply of cops of all the colours required in the carpet. The paper design will show full size, the whole of the pattern, filling and border, that repeats, in the colours that are to be used. The design is cut up horizontally into strips two squares wide; and the weaver works by this paper strip, which is attached to the fabric in its length, inserting and changing the shuttles carrying yarn of various colours. The warp of the loom consists of sets of ends of fine cotton at intervals of about ½ in. Thus the woven fabric consists of a woollen weft of various colours held together at intervals by a fine cotton warp.