Turkeywork is a knotted-and-cut pile furnishing textile produced in England from the sixteenth to the mid-eighteenth centuries. Turkeywork was used for table carpets, cupboard carpets, cushions, and especially for matched sets of upholstery for chair seats and backs.
Production
Turkeywork was produced by professional weavers in England from the 16th century. Short lengths or thrums of worsted wool were hand-knotted using the Turkish or Ghiordes knot on a linen or hemp-fibre warp. The colourful wool was shorn to produced a dense, even pile. Designs originally imitated so-called 'Turkey carpets', the general name in Early Modern England for imported carpets of Middle Eastern origin, which became popular for furniture covers in the 16th century. It is sometimes said that Early Modern turkeywork upholstery is a form of needlework, but this is no longer generally accepted. Economic historian Eric Kerridge records commercial production of turkeywork carpets as early as 1553 in Windsor, and "in Norwich in 1583, in York in 1595, and in Bradford in 1639". These carpets were used to covertables, hutches, and similar furniture, as well as for cushions and chair seats. Turkeywork was generally too expensive for use as floor carpets, "for each knot had to be formed separately by laying a thrum across two warp ends, folding it back under and inwards, and drawing its two ends up between the warps." However, for "chairs given hard use in eating, meeting, and parade rooms, it formed an especially satisfactory covering, being both durable and colorful." Turkeywork chairs were ordered by the dozen for meeting and committee rooms in the Palace of Whitehall and Holyrood Palace, and turkeywork coverings for seating furniture were exported to both Europe and Colonial America. The 1658 inventory of a Boston merchant includes "2 turkie bottoms and backs for chayres", and a 1685 inventory in Philadelphia includes "1 doz. and 6 new backs & seats of Turkey work for Chairs". Turkeywork upholstery slowly fell out of fashion in favour of caned seating, associated with the William and Mary style of the early 18th century. The output of the turkeywork industry in its heyday had been prodigious. A 1698 petition to the king to outlaw the making of cane chairs in Britain in order to protect jobs asserted that before caning became popular "there were yearly made and Vended in this Kingdom above five thousand dozen of Set-work,."
