Carpet Manufacturers Limited

Carpet Manufacturers Limited operated one of the first Australian factories to design, dye and weave high-quality carpets locally.

When the company established its factory in the Sydney suburb of Five Dock in 1938, Australia was importing 4 million yards of carpet a year despite being the world’s largest producer of the primary raw material for carpet manufacturing – wool.

Building a new industry

Carpet Manufacturers Limited was established with capital of £300,000 (around AU$33.5 million today), equally subscribed by Australian and overseas investors. This substantial investment reflected the scale of the undertaking: establishing a carpet factory required purpose-built premises, expensive imported machinery and a skilled workforce trained to operate it. Industry publications celebrated the venture as a milestone in Australian manufacturing, reflecting growing confidence that locally made carpets could compete with imported products in the valuable Australian carpet market.

The company was led by managing director Tresco G Rowe, already well known as the pioneer of Australian linoleum manufacturing. Construction of the Five Dock factory began on 22 February 1938 and progressed rapidly. Designed in a Functionalist Art Deco style, the complex incorporated modern materials and technologies, including hollow glass bricks, air conditioning and automatic fire sprinklers, together with staff amenities such as gardens, hot showers and a cafeteria with an outdoor dining patio.

To match the quality of imported carpets, the company imported specialised weaving machinery from Britain and the United States, including Full Spool, Gripper Spool and Jacquard Gripper looms, which were used to make high-grade Axminster carpets. Production commenced in June 1938, and by 1940 the factory employed around 200 people and operated 15 looms, with more being installed.

Axminster, Jacquard, broadloom?

Industrial carpet-making is a complex process, and these technical terms refer to carpet-making techniques and equipment. 

Carpet Manufacturers Limited was not the first ever Australian carpet maker, but it was the first to manufacture premium Axminster carpets on an industrial scale.

Unlike the tufted carpets common today, in which tufts are punched into a pre-woven backing and secured with adhesive, the backing and tufts of Axminster carpets are woven simultaneously on a loom, so the coloured pile yarns interlock with the weave of the backing. This interlocking construction locks the tufts in place without adhesive, producing an exceptionally durable carpet. Named after the English town where the technique was developed in hand-knotted carpets in the mid-18th century, Axminster carpets remain the premium standard for hotels, theatres and other commercial interiors.

A key advantage of Axminster carpets is that they use individual tufts rather than lengths of yarn running the full width of the carpet (an older method used in the weaving of Wilton and Brussels carpets). This allows for the creation of much more intricate patterns in a wider range of colours, and requires sophisticated mechanisms to reproduce each design accurately. Carpet Manufacturers Limited imported specialised Axminster looms using two different colour selection technologies, spool and jacquard gripper. 

Gripper Spool looms combine the spool method of colour selection with the gripper mechanism of cutting the tufts and placing them into the backing as it is woven. Carpet Manufacturers Limited imported all three kinds of loom – Full Spool, Gripper Spool and Jacquard Gripper – and used them to weave different types of carpet. 

The company installed looms in a variety of widths, including 12-foot (3.7-metre) broadloom machines capable of weaving carpet wide enough to cover an entire room without seams – a product never before manufactured in Australia.

The Butterworth Collection

The Caroline Simpson Library has recently acquired over 120 original carpet designs by John Graham Butterworth for Carpet Manufacturers Limited, together with factory photographs, design sketches, correspondence, colour guides and working notes dating from 1945 to 1947 (CSL&RC MSS 2026/4). These complement the library’s existing holdings, including the company’s 1950 commemorative publication (677.6430994 CAR) and a later Hy-Craft trade catalogue (TC 746.7 CAR/1959). Together these items provide insight into the design, manufacture and marketing of Australian-made carpets from the late 1930s to the postwar period.

John Graham Butterworth (1920–2006) worked as a designer for Carpet Manufacturers Limited after serving in the Australian army during World War II. His designs and notes illustrate the relationship between design development and industrial production. Executed in gouache on gridded card, the drawings are working documents rather than presentation artworks. Many are signed or initialled and annotated with colourways, design titles and production notes, while the grids reveal how designs were scaled and translated into loom instructions for Axminster weaving. Few comparable collections of original carpet design material survive in public collections.

Preserving the company’s story

The library’s collections document Carpet Manufacturers Limited from its establishment and through the postwar decades. Its 1950 commemorative publication (677.6430994 CAR) records the company’s rapid expansion. It explains every stage of manufacture – from preparing and dyeing wool to weaving and finishing – and illustrates the scale and modernity of the Five Dock factory. It also records how, like many Australian manufacturers, Carpet Manufacturers Limited adapted its production during World War II, manufacturing canvas cloth for American troops and processing wool tops into finished yarn for military textiles.

The library also holds a later trade catalogue, It’s a woman’s world with Hy-Craft seamless Axminster broadloom, published by Carpet Manufacturers Limited around 1959 (TC 746.7 CAR/1959). The catalogue illustrates the company’s continued production of Australian-made Axminster carpets, including seamless broadloom designs for domestic interiors. Available designs included ‘Admirer’, ‘Jenolan Caves’, ‘Monaco’, ‘Corroboree’, ‘Persian Garden’ and ‘Roseville’. Carpet Manufacturers Limited continued manufacturing wool carpets until its takeover by Kinnears Ropes Australia Ltd in 1973.

Together, the recently acquired design archive and the library’s existing holdings document Carpet Manufacturers Limited’s activities, from factory operations and manufacturing processes to product design and marketing. The archive complements the library’s broader collections relating to furnishing textiles, interior decoration and Australian manufacturing. With Axminster carpets no longer manufactured in Australia since the 2000s, this collection preserves the story of one part of our once-thriving textile-manufacturing industry and of the designers, engineers and craftspeople whose work made it possible.