24905

Donegal Capet

Ireland

Early 20^th century’

Wool pile of symmetric knots on a wool foundation

Designed by C.F.A Voysey

This is one of the most attractive of the Donegal Arts and Crafts carpets, the “Donnemara”  here with  a barely visible rust ground overlaid with three full and two partial lateral columns of fleshy, stenciled, compound palmettes.  Turkish-style tulips adorn the central and side axes. Onion-style leaves support the red “batwing” palmettes in the two adjacent columns. The green border shows lotus palmettes controlled by a thick, plain strapwork arabesque. The style overall is neither Celtic Revival nor Oushak takeoff. The design is unidirectional. As in all Donegal weavings, they were executed by local women on vertical wooden looms, using local wool. A cartoon must have been necessary at the start, but the weavers quickly got the hang of it. This particularly large carpet probably took a team of five weavers six of seven months to complete.  There are four distinct colourways known, And the sixes may vary with three pattern repeats. The Donnemara was retailed exclusively by Liberty of London. Any surviving carpets, no matter their present locations, must have initially passed through Liberty. Unlike the Oushak-style Donegals, the pattern is more textile-like and the field is almost entirely covered. This connects it more to the Morris Arts and Crafts tradition rather than to a historizing Celtic/Anatolian trend. Here there is no attempt at shading or layering of pattern, everything is flat, two-dimensional and without depth. The Donnemara type is one of the several designs woven exclusively for Liberty. All share this wall-paper style of drawing. The pile is thick and the rug is in good condition with no visible repairs.