OT Preservation News
Brussels Carpet Installed in Dining Room
In March, the Owens-Thomas House reintroduced wall-to-wall
Brussels (loop pile) carpeting in the museum’s dining room. A Bill of Sale of House Furnishings sold by Richard Richardson – the first owner of the house – to his business associate Durham T. Hall documents the inclusion of a Brussels carpet in the room in 1822. Although no remnants of the original carpet exist, the museum chose a documented early 19th-century design featuring a brilliant orange pattern referred to as “Chinese Lattice” to cover the floor.
The English carpet manufacturing company Woodward Grosvenor wove the new wool carpeting at a standard width of 27 inches using methods from the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The carpet was then shipped to the United States in 27-inch rolls and delivered to the Gfroerer Company, rug and carpet specialists based in Cincinnati, Ohio. After hand-sewing the individual rolls, Robert Gfroerer installed the completed carpet in the O-T dining room in much the same fashion as when the Richardsons first installed their Brussels carpeting nearly two hundred years ago.
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