Tapestries

“ With such flowery guides to mark the way the path to slumberland is followed. Once within the bedroom, the poppies of the hangings spread drowsy influence, and the happy sleeper passes into unconsciousness, passes through the flowered border of the ancient square, into the scene beyond, becomes one of those storied persons in the enchanted land and lives with them in jousts and tourneys or in fêtes champêtres at lovely châteaux. The magic spell of the house of tapestries has fallen like the dew from heaven to bless the striver in our modern life of exigency and fatigue. ”

“ Tapestries, for the most part, offer us a semblance of nature, and cheat us with a sense of unlimited horizon. The older tapestries give us, with this, suggestions of human life and action in out-of-door scenes sufficiently unrealistic to offer a vague dream of existence in fields and forests. ”

“ Paul Baudry appeared at about this time striking a clear pure note of delicate decoration. The few panels that he drew for the Gobelins charm the eye with happy reminiscences of Lebrun, of Claude Audran, a potpourri of petals fallen from the roses of yesterday mixed with the spices of to-day.
But if the work of this talented artist illustrates anything, it is the change in the uses of tapestries. The modern ones are made to be framed, as flat as the wall against which they are secured. In a word, they take the place of frescoes. The pleasure of touching a mobile fabric is lost. ”

“ So difficult is it to determine the work of the two looms that weavers themselves could not distinguish without the aid of a red thread which they at one time wove in the border. Yet because the years of the highest perfection in tapestries have been when the high loom was in vogue, some peculiar power is supposed to reside within it. That the high movements of the fine arts have been contemporary with perfection in tapestries, seems not to be taken into consideration. ”

“ The opinion of two shrewd men of different types is interesting as bearing on the subject of tapestries. One with tastes fully cultivated says impressively, “Buy good old tapestries whenever you see them, for there are no more.” ”

“ Happy he who can make of tapestries the raison d’être for a few months’ loitering in Europe, and can ravish the eye and intoxicate the imagination with the storied cloths found hanging in England, in France, in Spain, in Italy, in Sweden, and learn from them the fascinating tales of other men’s lives in other men’s times. ”

“ Time fades a little even the securest dyes, and that little is just enough to reduce to flat monotones a work in which perhaps sixty thousand tones are set in subtle shading.
HAUTE LISSE
The worker on tapestries, the modern restorer—to whom be much honour—finds a sign of identification in the handling of old tapestries that is scarcely within the province of the amateur, but is worth mentioning. It is the black tracing on the warp with which high-warp weavers assist their work of copying the artist’s cartoon. ”

“ To dream of seeing rich tapestry, foretells that luxurious living will be to your liking, and if the tapestries are not worn or ragged, you will be able to gratify your inclinations.
If a young woman dreams that her rooms are hung with tapestry, she will soon wed some one who is rich and above her in standing. ”

“ The original tapestries, as we have said, were designed for the Sistine Chapel, but they were long ago removed from that place and are now preserved in the Gallery of Tapestries in the Vatican.
The colors of the tapestries have faded, but color never formed the chief attraction of these compositions. What one always admired, and can still admire in engravings and other copies, is what we call the dramatic character of the picture, the way in which the painter has so arranged his figures as to make them tell a story in a lively, graphic fashion. ”

“ This impulse grew with the centuries, until tapestries were a natural art expression of different races of men, so that we have Italian, Spanish, French, Dutch and English tapestries, each with national tastes and characteristics of production. As time went on, inevitable machinery undertook the task of making wall hangings, with the whole-hearted help of all who had given their lives to art, and tapestries had become a part of the riches of the world. ”

“ It answers the questions people are always asking as to how tapestries differ from paintings, and good tapestries from bad tapestries. It will interest lovers of paintings and rugs and history and fiction, for it shows how tapestries compare with paintings in picture interest, with rugs in texture interest, and with historic and other novels in romantic interest; presenting on a magnificent scale the stories of the Iliad and the Odyssey, the Æneid and the Metamorphoses, the Bible and the Saints, Ancient and Medieval History and Romance. ”

“ High-warp tapestry we have traced lightly from Egypt through Greece and Rome and, almost losing the thread in the Middle Ages, have seen it rising a virile industry, nursed in monasteries. It was when the stirrings of artistic life were commencing under the Van Eycks in the North and under Giotto and the Tuscans in the South that the weaving of tapestries reached a high standard of production and from that time until the Nineteenth Century has been an important artistic craft. ”

“ French terms belong so much to the art of tapestry weaving that it is hard to find their English equivalent. Tapestries of verdure and of personnages describe the two general classes, the former being any charming mass of greenery, from the Gothic millefleurs, and curling leaves with animals beneath, to the lovely landscapes of sophisticated park and garden which made Beauvais famous in the Eighteenth Century. Tapisseries des personnages have, as the name implies, the human figure as the prominent part of the design. ”

“ High-warp looms were those that made famous the tapestries of Arras in the Fifteenth Century, of Brussels in the Sixteenth, and of Paris in the Seventeenth, therefore it is not strange that they are worshipped as having a resident, mysterious power. ”

“ After the Renaissance came exaggeration and lack of [Pg 185] sincerity; then the improvement of the Seventeenth Century, notably in France, and after that the dainty fancies of the Eighteenth Century, and here we are dealing with art so modern that it needs no elucidation. The drawing in tapestries is a subject as fascinating as it is inexhaustible, but, however much one may read on it, nothing equals actual association with as many tapestries as are available, for the eye must be trained by vision and not by intellectual process alone. ”

“ If your taste is for modern painted furniture and vivid Bakst colours in cushions and hangings, take your lovely old tapestry away. Speaking of tapestries, do not imagine that they can never be used in small rooms and narrow halls. Plate XIV shows an illustration of a hall in an old-fashioned country house, that was so narrow that it aroused despair. We call attention to the fact that it gains greatly in width from the perspective shown in the tapestry, one of the rare, old, painted kind, which depicts distance, wide vistas and a scene flooded with light. ”

“ It speaks a great change in interiors, and sets tapestries on a new plane. Later on, they are still further diminished. But the sadness of noting this change is routed by the thrills of pleasure given by the exquisite design, colour and weave.
The Portières of the Gods was, then, a series of eight small hangings, four typifying the seasons and four the elements, with an appropriate Olympian forming the central point of interest and the excuse for an entourage of thrilling and graceful versatility. ”

“ See larger image GOBELINS TAPESTRY. LATE NINETEENTH CENTURY
Pantheon, Paris
The tapestries on the looms are garish, crude, modern art in its cheapest expression; or else they are brilliant-hued copies of time-softened paintings that were never meant to be translated into wool and silk.
The looms are always busy, nevertheless. There is always preserved a staff of officers, the director, the chemist of dyes, and all that; and the tapissiers are careful workmen, with perfection, not haste, in view. The State directs the work, the State pays for it, the State consumes the products. ”

“ The word weaver means so little in these days that it is necessary to consider what were the conditions exacted of the weavers of tapestries in the time of tapestry’s highest perfection. A tapissier was an artist with whom a loom took place of an easel, and whose brush was a shuttle, and whose colour-medium was thread instead of paints. ”

“ Tapestries required muscular strength, for the material was heavy, and so men were given this work in town workshops. The ladies did the needle, bobbin and pillow work in the castles [161] and convents. True tapestry is always woven on a loom, and is a combination of artistic design with skill in weaving.
This tapestry industry was introduced into Western Europe in the Middle Ages by the Moors, but we can trace the art of making woven pictures to much earlier times. ”

“ We are now in the time when the perfection of [Pg 54] production was reached in the tapestries we call Gothic. Artists had grown more certain of their touch in colour and design, and weavers worked with such conscientious care as is now almost unknown, and produced a quality of tapestry superior to that of their forebears. The Fifteenth Century and the first few years of the Sixteenth were spent in perfecting the style of the preceding century, and so great was the perfection reached, that it was impossible to develop further on those lines. ”

“ It must be remembered in identifying French tapestries of this kind that things Gothic had been vanquished by the new fashion of things Renaissance, and that all models were Italian. Giulio Romano and his school of followers were the mode in France, not only in drawing, but in the revival of classic subject. This condition in the art world found expression in a set of tapestries from the factory of La Trinité that are sufficiently celebrated to be set down in the memory with an underscoring. ”

“ That there are ancient tapestries existing in England fully equal to those in France is, we think, almost certain; but of course they are not to be summoned from the “vasty deep” of neglect and oblivion by the powerless voice of an obscure individual. Gladly would we, had it been in our power, have enriched our sketch by references to some of them.
The following notice of a tapestry at Coventry is drawn from “Smith’s Selections of the ancient Costume of Britain;” and the names of the tapestries at Hampton Court Palace from “Pyne’s Royal Residences.” ”

“ Tapestry, as we popularly think of it, in great rectangular wall-hangings with rather florid figures from Scriptural scenes, commonly dates from the sixteenth century or later, so that it is out of our scope to study its manufacture on an extensive scale. But there are earlier tapestries, much more restrained in design, and more interesting and frequently more beautiful. Of these earlier works there is less profusion, for the examples are rare and precious, and seldom come into the market nowadays. The later looms were of course more prolific as the technical facilities increased. ”

“ The looms on which tapestries are made are such as have been known as long as the history of man is known, but we have come to call them high-warp and low-warp, or as the French have it, haute lisse and basse lisse. In the celebrated periods of weaving the high loom has been the one in use, and to it is accredited a power almost mysterious ”

“ Although the making such narrow, long tapestries survived into the 14th and 15th centuries (see fig. 16) , larger shapes (see figs. 14 and 15) suitable as curtains and as hangings to cover large wall-spaces became the more frequent. From this time forward the output from many European towns of big pieces, mostly woven with coloured wools, was continuous and considerable. The more sumptuous examples from the 14th to the 17th century were enriched with gleaning silks and metallic threads. [8] ”

“ In 1528 the Brussels tapissiers and dealers in tapestries were required to mark their weavings, and Charles V. ordered all tapestry makers in the Low Countries to do the same. [5] This practice was followed in other countries into which Tapestry makers’ marks. emigrant Flemish or French weavers had carried the industry, making their tapestries very often from copies they took with them of cartoons designed by noted Italian and Flemish painters. ”

“ Sand and gesso were mixed with the gray paint in order to give the suggestion of rough stone. The great stone walls, as you know, made the old castles cold and colorless. This coldness was relieved by stained-glass windows, rich tapestries, hangings, and colorful costumes.
The boy who painted the tapestry for this scene went to books and to the old tapestries in the art museum for his inspiration. He produced the effect of rich tapestry by painting directly on the beaver board, with thin vertical strokes of pure color. ”

“ In every line of weft or filling, the shuttle must be changed every time a change of color is required by the cartoon, or colored drawing of the design from which the weaver works. He sees the face of the tapestry, if at all, only in a mirror placed in front of the loom. Tapestry weaving requires a high degree of artistic and technical skill; hand-made tapestries are costly.
Machine-made tapestries are produced on a Jacquard loom, of wool, cotton, silk, or rayon, or in mixtures of these fibers. They vary enormously in appearance and durability. ”

“ TAPESTRY AND PILE WORK
Tapestry.—What are generally known in trade as tapestries, are figured fabrics for curtains, hangings, &c., not damask, which is distinct, being woven with only one warp and weft. Real tapestry is a hand-made fabric of very ancient origin, being in use since the days of the ancient Egyptians, who wove or worked it in a manner very similar to that employed at the present time. It does not belong to ‘jacquard weaving,’ but being the first in point of the excellence of its patterns amongst figured fabrics, a short description of it may not be out of place. ”