CARPET designing is a branch of Applied Art which makes exacting demands upon its adherents, requiring as it does technical knowledge to an exceptional extent. The average designer who ventures into this field, however high his artistic ability may be, is not likely to achieve a practical success, unless and until he has studied the particular capacities and limitations of carpet fabrics. For this reason, the public carpet designer is more or less of a specialist in his domain, which is rarely invaded unless by such exceptional craftsmen as the late Walter Crane or Voysey. Similarly, and because there are so many varieties of carpet fabrics, requiring special knowledge and treatment, all carpet manufacturers maintain private staffs of designers, whose business it is to produce new patterns for each season and quality in accordance with the commercial requirements. For the manufacturer has to be governed to a great extent by the tastes and inclinations of his customers, the carpet dealers, and cannot afford to be too enterprising in initiating novelties, while the carpet dealer, in his turn is, as a rule, rather a follower than a leader of the public taste. The commercial standard has, therefore, been to some extent a hampering influence upon the progress of carpet design towards perfection, but it is certainly less so than in the past. For it has been modified of recent years by a new tendency, which, however, is not one of unmixed advantage to the manufacturer. This tendency may be expressed as the intervention of the consumer. Scarcity of materials during the war, and the consequent obligation of carpet dealers to accept what they can get from manufacturers has, temporarily at any rate, modified the influence of the individual buyer of carpets upon carpet design and colour; but previous to the war it had become a factor to be reckoned with. There were, and are, many householders possessed of definite ideas upon arrangement of design, combination of colour, and harmony of decoration; and these ideas often germinate in suggestions or demands conveyed through the dealer to the manufacturer for single carpets of special colouring or arrangement. Often these suggestions prove to be more original than effective; but often they lead to effects both artistic and saleable. This critical and creative spirit on the part of the individual is not, therefore, to be despised by the technical expert. It encourages novelty, and tends towards the evolution of new ideas in design and colour, and a liberation from an excessive dominance of the commercial standard.