Designing with axminster carpets

by Katie Daniel | December 29, 2016 12:03 pm

By Johnny Massey
For many interior designers, Axminster carpeting can be a suitable floorcovering choice in the hospitality market, especially when specifying for public spaces. The finish is commonly used in corridors and public spaces such as ballrooms and their pre-function areas. The soil-repelling, resilient characteristics of wool, paired with three-dimensional weaving, make this type of carpeting suitable for high-traffic areas. To understand the future of this material, design/construction professionals should understand its past.

Advancements in Axminster
In 18^th-century Britain, there was an influx of foreign goods, including the textile import referred to as a ‘Turkey carpet.’ The Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce (RSA) was founded in 1753; its mission was to heighten the British profile in design, arts, and manufacturing through the creation of quality consumer goods. It provided grants and patents for industry innovators and hosted competitions for product innovation, including the search for the best imitation of the Turkey carpet. A British cloth-weaver named Thomas Whitty sparked his carpet-manufacturing career by winning a few of RSA’s challenges to imitate the imported textile.

In April 1755, Whitty ran trials and began working on improving the manufacturing process of the carpet. Whitty’s intensive concentration on process gave life to the British woven carpet and led him to open his own carpet factory in the town of Axminster later that same year. (For more see, Luxury and Pleasure in Eighteenth-Century Britain, by Maxine Berg, published in Oxford University Press [2005].)

Construction of the Axminster carpet has remained virtually unchanged, with the defining characteristic being the pile woven directly into the backing. However, process innovation has continually been a focus for manufacturers when improving and expanding product offerings.  The introduction of Jacquard loom in the early 1800s provided an automated system for weaving complex patterns in textiles. Punch-card systems are laced together controlling the yarn placement of the loom. Each card has rows of holes punched through in order of the design being woven. This process eliminated manual weaving labour and revolutionized pattern weaving.

A traditional woven carpet, in the contemporary sense of the word, uses the Jacquard system to weave different components of the floorcovering. This method of weaving design components separately calls for the pieces to be sewn together onsite by the installation team. Like any method, traditional weaving has advantages and disadvantages. Traditional weaving allows manufacturers to create smaller runs, allowing for shorter lead times. However, it also creates an increased number of seams in the floorscape. These seams form weak spots that wear faster than the remainder of the carpet.

Not unlike 18^th-century British culture, today’s contract markets and consumer activity dictate how products and processes are updated. This paradigm in commerce allowed for the introduction of digital pattern technology, called the ‘electronic Jacquard.’ With its introduction, weaving technology generated new levels of pattern scale and dimension by eliminating the typical 1.8-m (6-ft) repeat constraints imposed by traditional weaving. This process can create patterns with virtually limitless repeats. It has drastically improved and sped up the process of creating carpeting for traditional interiors, as well as contemporary interiors that reject compartmentalized elements of design.

Using this technology, contemporary hospitality designers can create the seamless interiors of their imaginations more efficiently and effectively. The difference is the design elements are woven together in one unique carpet breadth instead of in separate components, creating a more durable floorcovering and efficient installation process.

Other advancements include a faster weaving process (made possible through a decreased range of motion for certain weaving mechanisms), the introduction of new yarn blends, use of computer-aided design (CAD), and the ability to weave photorealistic effects with multiple colours. Further, the industry standard is now an 80 per cent wool and 20 per cent nylon yarn blend. By adding this nylon, the abrasion resistance substantially increases compared to solely using wool. This blend enhances performance of both fibres, suitable for the high-traffic areas common in hospitality projects.

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Weaving Axminster carpet
The key differentiator of Axminster carpet is the integrated relationship of the pile woven into the backing as the carpet is manufactured. This creates a three-dimensional product substantially more durable than tufted carpet, which is a product characterized as two-dimensional.

In contemporary Axminster weaving, shots of weft—the backing elements travelling across the width of the loom—are perpendicularly woven to the shots of warp travelling the length of the loom. While the weft and warp intertwine, metal grippers select yarn and weave it into place. In traditional Jacquard loom weaving, the punch-cards guide the yarns to the appropriate heights in order for the gripper to pluck the correct colour in the design. The grippers, described as metal ‘bird beaks,’ swing upward from the bed of the loom to select the yarn. The weft shoots across the warp while the gripper—with freshly sliced yarn in tow—begins its descent into the bed of the loom. The intersection of warp and weft seizes the tuft and locks it into place. As many as 12 warp and wefts can hold a single tuft in position. A beater bar then secures the tuft and weft tightly against each other to create the carpet.

The three-dimensional weaving of Axminster carpet allows for the utmost durability. However, without the correct yarn type, the carpet would not hold up in the high-traffic areas of Canadian hospitality interiors.

Why wool—a curated selection
Not all wools are created equal—geography, climate, sheep breed, and even location on the animal from where the material is sheared dictate the properties of the wool fibre. Fibres in British wool are more resilient due to the daily conditions the sheep encounter, when compared to New Zealand sheep.

Utilizing wool has many advantages in the commercial flooring sector. For example, its:

• level of hue saturation or clarity cannot be matched by synthetics (wool’s physical structure lends itself to a more controlled lustre and
  richer colour);
• naturally existing crimp provides a built-in resilience to foot traffic, as the fibre literally bounces back, helping retain the structural integrity
  of the pile;
• unique scaled surface hides soiling, resulting
  in less-intensive cleaning requirements than synthetic fibres;
• naturally flame-resistant attributes means wool carpets can exceed flammability performance without the need for spray-on treatments;
• acoustic properties allow the material to absorb noise and reduce the impact of noise pollution in hospitality interiors;
• physical properties and design capabilities offer warmer interiors than hard-surfaced products;
• maintenance needs are lower because the fibres naturally expand under heat, releasing soil and retracting back to original form (nylon alone cannot naturally recover, leading 100 per cent nylon products to flatten easier than wool-rich products); and
• ability to act as an atmospheric regulator by absorbing up to 30 per cent of its own weight in moisture (the wool fibres release absorbed moisture when the external environment is drier).

Benefits of specifying an Axminster carpet
In the carpet industry, it is commonly known the dimensional stability of an Axminster carpet is far greater than that of two-dimensional tufted products. The tufting process requires a secondary backing to be adhered to the primary backing, which can fall prey to delamination in certain situations. Delamination is the separation of the primary and secondary layers of the tufted carpet, resulting in a significant loss of structural integrity. In certain types of tufted carpet manufacturing, the design is printed on the surface of the pile instead of utilizing pre-dyed yarns.

Clarity of design
During the printing process of tufted carpet, colour is injected onto the surface of the pile, which can result in colours bleeding together, therefore losing complete clarity of design. With Axminster-style products, each yarn is pre-dyed, ensuring full colour penetration. This process allows for crisper design elements and richer colour profiles, resulting in a more esthetically pleasing product.

Appearance retention
Due to the nature of the printing process, dye can never fully penetrate the yarn used in printed tufted carpets. Even minimal wear can pull apart the pile to expose the un-dyed yarn or backing, altering the interior’s entire colour palette. Since the dye is applied on the surface (and not an integrated part of the yarn), it can be easily removed in the normal foot traffic and periodic cleaning.

Esthetic feel
Specifying the right carpet for a hospitality project heightens the interior with a luxury product. Tufted products are also much thinner, resulting in poor underfoot comfort when compared to an Axminster carpet.

Ease of maintenance
Printed products generally utilize 100 per cent nylon and therefore face the limitations of cleaning and maintaining nylon fibres. Wool-rich Axminster carpets have excellent soil-repelling properties due to the scaled surface of wool fibre.

Dimensional stability and performance
An Axminster product will never succumb to delamination like a tufted product because the pile is woven directly into the backing instead of being adhered together later.

Life expectancy
Carpets are replaced in hospitality projects because they lose their appearance, shape, or design relevance. Due to the nature of the manufacturing process and application of dye, a traditional tufted product will lose its appearance at a faster rate than Axminster carpet.

Price point
The durability, life expectance, and quality construction make Axminster carpeting a premium product with a higher initial cost than a tufted product. However, it offers superior appearance retention and a long lifespan.

Installing and designing with Axminster
The most common method of installing Axminster in hospitality interiors is the double-stick method. This involves a releasable adhesive to fully adhere a double-stick pad to the subfloor. Breadths of carpet are then ‘dry-laid’ per the provided seaming diagrams and design layouts (referred to as ‘flooded floor plans’), before being fully bonded to the pad.

Flooring experts suggest installers work to a central line at all times, keeping the patterns matched and aligned in both length and width. In order to ensure the carpet’s backing has sufficiently transferred into the adhesive, the carpet should be glided flat to remove all air pockets between the carpet and the pad. It is strongly recommended installers do not cover freshly installed Axminster carpet with any plastic products. They should instead use alternate coverings such as plywood or heavy-duty craft paper.

Similar to the construction, the design process has remained the same since the early days of Axminster. Designers would draft freeform drawings onto point paper, assigning each point on the paper to a coloured tuft of yarn. Today, this same principle is applied to CAD carpet design programs. Axminster has seven points per inch across the width (weft) of the loom, meaning there are seven pixels across an inch to design. The number of tufts per inch in the length (warp) depends on the end use. (For example, best practices include six tufts in guest rooms and up to 14 tufts in high-traffic public spaces). The introduction of CAD and the electronic Jacquard loom have enabled designers to achieve massive scale and design precision.

Conclusion
With advancements in technology, the process of designing and creating Axminster carpet will continually evolve. Improvements to looms will lead to quicker production times, while use of different yarn types to create texture will advance design. Improvements to sustainability will be a priority, as consumers push for less waste, leading to an increase in the use of natural materials, such as wool. Through all these improvements and advancements to designing and weaving carpet, one thing should stay the same—the integrity and strength of the floorcovering due to sound construction.

Johnny Massey is the vice-president of operations for Brintons Americas and has been with the company since 1999. He graduated from Mississippi Delta Community College with a degree in graphic design. Massey can be reached via e-mail at Brintons@brintonsusa.com[2].

Source URL: https://www.constructioncanada.net/designing-with-axminster-carpets/

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