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Rugs
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Lady Sealing a Letter, Jean-Siméon Chardin (French), oil on canvas, 1733
The 1703 inventory of Nicolas Volant, a merchant of Québec, is among the earliest to describe a "tapay fasson de Turquie," which was set on a turned cherry table. Philippe de Rigaud, marquis de Vaudreuil and governor general of New France, owned "un grand tapis de Turquie" valued at fifty livres in 1725. A cherry table belonging to Nicolas Jérémie, a merchant from Québec, was covered "with its point de Hongrie tapestry carpet" when he died in 1732. Marie-Madeleine d'Amours de Clignancourt of Québec owned a blue drap carpet in 1757. In 1764, royal notary Pierre Tiphaine of Saint-Pierre in Martinique owned a pine table covered with a green cloth. A curious rug used to cover a table in the Québec home of Michel Balan in 1725 is described as being of "tigerskin."
Isaac Royall, Jr., and his family, Robert Feke (American), oil on canvas, 1741
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Woven floor coverings were rare in New France. Rugs and carpets appear in a few households, but were not generally used on the floor. Instead, they are often described as draped on tables and occasionally chests of drawers. Green and blue serge coverings were not uncommon, and tapestry rugs are also mentioned. The 1749 inventory of Pierre Gaultier de Varennes, seigneur de La Vérendrye, lists an old blue drap carpet atop a pine table. "Tapis de Turquie," as they are identified in French colonial documents, were also used atop tables. Two genre scenes by the French artist Jean-Siméon Chardin illustrate this practice. 
Card Tricks, Jean-Siméon Chardin (French), oil on canvas, circa 1735
A group portrait of Isaac Royall, Jr., of Massachusetts and his family by New York-born itinerant painter Robert Feke provides an interesting Anglo-colonial counterpoint to New France. Like painted or printed cottons, ownership of such rugs allowed elite French colonial consumers to participate in the fashion for the "exotic." 
Detail, Royall Family portrait
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Philippe Peiré, a bourgeois of Québec living in the rue du Cul-de-Sac in 1732, owned a "tapis de point de Turquie." A "tapis vieux façon de Turquie" was sold from the estate of Geneviève Marchand, the widow Marcoux, in 1756. A wool prayer rug from western Anatolia replicates the appearance of the rug seen in the Royall family portrait and possibly those owned by Philippe Peiré and the widow Marcoux. A similar carpet in the collection of the Brooklyn Museum, laid atop an Anglo-colonial table from the late seventeenth or early eighteenth century, evokes the actual context of these exotic imports, in most cases deemed too precious to be laid directly underfoot. 
Table, rug, and posset pot, Brooklyn Museum
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Prayer rug, western Anatolia, wool, second half of the seventeenth century
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