NATIONAL PARK SERVICE The Most Splendid Carpet

Comucopias

The newspaper description of the Senate carpet refers to two cornucopias, symbols of peace and plenty. Probably these were in the corners of the central compartment, their stems crossed to agree with the typical appearance of cornucopias in eighteenth century carpet design.

Cornucopias used to symbolize the bounty of the land have been an important part of every western iconographic repertoire since antiquity. Probably this connotation originated in the very ancient primitive drinking horn, which, filled with both grapes and wheat, came to stand for plentiful wine and food. Ceres, goddess of the harvest, is perhaps the most famous Roman figure to carry the cornucopia as a symbol of abundance.

Throughout the Middle Ages and the Renaissance cornucopias continued to serve as symbols of plenty, and, like the liberty pole and cap, were taken over as an attribute for Britannia in 1754. Again, George Richardson explained the symbolic meaning of Britannia's cornucopia in Iconology, as "emblematical of the various productions of the country, which is greatly improved by the industry of its inhabitants, and their great skill in cultivation." [19] Richardson also associated the horn of plenty with the drawings personifying Hospitality, Abundance, Fortune, Honour, Liberality, and Happiness, a veritable cornucopia of uses in itself, illustrating how popular and widespread was the symbol.

FIGURE 29: English Georgian needlework carpet, c. 1740. Colonial Williamsburg Photograph.

Like the liberty pole and cap, the cornucopia came early to American iconography. Between 1719 and 1721 William Burgis, a New York engraver, printed a "South Prospect of New York," dedicated to George III, with a bare-breasted goddess obviously symbolizing fertility holding a cornucopia in one hand, and the seal of George III, Rex, in the other. Burgis used the same figure again in the large and impressive cartouche for his map, "Boston in New England," dedicated to Governor William Burnet and issued in 1728. In 1733, the Trustees of the Colony of Georgia used a cornucopia on their seal, in the hands of the "Spirit of the Colony," where it represented plenty and prosperity. In early years the cornucopia was also popular as a printer's ornament, continuing a European usage as old as the printer's device itself.

After independence, the cornucopia became associated with personifications of America in her different forms as Greek goddess and later, as Columbia. It appeared in the series of representations of "America Lamenting," in an engraving of Columbia in the first issue of the Columbian Magazine in 1786, and in 1789 the same magazine printed a frontispiece of the "Genius of America," referring to her cornucopia as a symbol of "agriculture and plenty."

Despite these appearances in prints and engravings as a single element, cornucopias frequently appeared in duplicate, with crossed tails, especially in interior decoration, textiles, and carpets. In English and French decoration, crossed cornucopias are frequently found in corners of ceilings in plasterwork ornament. [20]

If crossed cornucopias fit well into ceiling corners, this happy appropriateness of form applied also to carpets. A Louis XV Savonnerie carpet has elaborate basketwork cornucopias with a profusion of flowers, while an English Georgian carpet made about 1735 has smaller, robust baskets to fit into a border about eight inches wide. By the late 1750s when Robert Adam came on the scene, it had become customary for carpets to reflect the ceiling design, copying almost exactly each motif. A drawing of Adam's carpet "for Sir Nash Curzon Baronet" illustrates the point perfectly.

In the Senate carpet, some of the cornucopias were filled not only with flowers, but held olive branches among the blossoms "expressive of peace." Probably these "peace" cornucopias were crossed with the other sort of cornucopia, which bore "fruit and grain, the emblems of plenty." The search for a specifically American cornucopia which could be dated prior to 1790 ended in frustration, but one dating from 1797 on the pediment of the First Bank of the United States in Philadelphia seemed appropriate for the cornucopias in the Senate carpet. This cornucopia, carved in mahogany by Clodius Legrand, contained, in addition to the typical European melange of apples, pears, and wheat stalks, American flowers and fruits, including ears of corn, melons, pumpkins, and squash. An adaptation of the Legrand cornucopia was decided upon for the Senate carpet, as an especially American "emblem of plenty."

FIGURE 30: Pediment sculpture of the First Bank of the United States, carved and painted mahogany, by Clodius Legrand, 1797. The First Bank of the United States, Philadelphia. National Park Service photograph by Macti Degan.

FIGURE 31: Design for a carpet by Robert Adam for Sir Nash Curzon, c. 1760. Courtesy of the Trustees of Sir John Soane's Museum, London.