pets, though there are specimens in which the
workmanship is the same throughout. The details of their designs consist
for the most part of arabesques and long curved serrated leaves similar
to such as are commonly used in Rhodian pottery decoration of the 16th
century, though more typical of those so frequent in 17th-century
Turkish ornament. Various considerations lead to the conclusion that
these so-called Polish carpets were probably made in either
Constantinople or Damascus (_tapete Damaschini_ frequently occur in
Venetian inventories of the 16th century) rather than, as has been
thought, by the Persian workmen employed at the Mazarski silk factory
which lasted for a short period only during the 18th century at Sleucz
in Poland.

Carpets made in France.

The European carpet manufactory, of which a continuous history for some
two hundred and fifty years is recorded with exceptional completeness,
is that which has been maintained under successive regimes, royal,
imperial and republican, in France--at the Hotel des Gobelins in Paris.
Seventy years before its organization under Colbert in 1667 as a state
manufactory (_Manufacture Royale des Meubles de la Couronne_), Henry IV.
had founded royal art workshops for all sorts of decorative work, at the
Louvre; and here in 1604 a workroom was established for making Oriental
carpets by the side of that which existed for making _tapis flamands_.
In 1610 letters patent were granted to the Sieur Fortier, who has been
reputed to be the first inventor in France of the art of making in silk
and wool real Turkey and other piled carpets with grounds of gold
thread, which must have been sumptuous fabrics probably resembling the
so-called Polish carpets of this date. Some ten years later it is
recorded that Pierre Dupont and Simon Lourdet started a pile carpet
(_tapis veloutes_) manufactory at Chaillot (Paris) in large premises
which had been used for the manufacture of soap--whence the name of
"Savonnerie." To this converted manufactory were transferred in 1631 the
carpet-makers from the Louvre, and under the direct patronage of the
crown it continued its operations for many years at Chaillot. It was not
until 1828 that the making of _tapis de la Savonnerie_ (pile carpets of
a fine velvety character) was transferred to the Hotel des Gobelins.
Here, in contradistinction to the Savonnerie, carpets are made others
which, like those of Beauvais (where a manufactory of hangings and
c