pictures being also washed over the outside with the same, and all the
edges effectually fastened down, the cotton cloth to which they are
applied being tightly stretched over a wooden frame. When domestic
paste is made, the material is frequently injured by scorching, or by
the addition of too much water. Good paste, when spread on paper, will
not strike through it like water, but will remain on the surface, like
butter on a piece of bread. To make paste of a superior quality, that
will not spoil when kept in a cool place for several months, it is
necessary to add dissolved alum as a preservative. When a few quarts
are required, dissolve a dessert-spoonful of alum in two quarts of
tepid water. Put the water in a tin pail that will hold six or eight
quarts, as the flour of which the paste is made will expand greatly
while it is boiling. As soon as the tepid water has cooled, stir in
good rye or wheat flour, until the liquid has the consistency of cream.
See that every lump of flour is crushed before placing the vessel
over the fire. To prevent scorching the paste, place over the fire a
dish-kettle or wash-boiler, partly filled with water, and set the tin
pail containing the material for paste in the water, permitting the
bottom to rest on a few large nails or pebbles, to prevent excessive
heat. Now add a teaspoonful of powdered resin, a few cloves to flavor
the paste, and let it cook until the paste has become as thick as
“Graham mush,” when it will be ready for use. Keep it in a tight jar,
and it will last for a long time. If too thick, add cold water, and
stir it thoroughly. Such paste will hold almost as well as glue.
The famous picture-books of Walter Crane make a very pretty frieze for
screens; the artists of the family sometimes paint a frieze. In these
days of dadoes the screens are often made with dado, wainscot, and
frieze in three different colored papers, so that there are three tiers
of background for the pictures, if the maker desires to leave spaces
between them. The cutting out of the pictures is an amusing occupation
for all the family on a rainy day.
This making of screens sometimes leads to another very attractive
work for a rainy day--the preparation for a fancy dress ball. This,
in a lonely country house, far away from the chance of any outward
amusement, has often cheated a fortnight’s bad weather of its
heart-depressing qualities.
As we have not the stores of old armor, old brocade and satin, powdered
wigs, and costumes of the different reigns, which may be supposed from
modern English novels to be the property of every English mansion,
we must call upon taste and upon our national faculty of invention
to help us in this dilemma. The country store will give us black and
white tarlatan, chintz, cotton flannel (a most excellent medium), and,
indeed, flannels of all sorts. Black lace, jewelry, and flowers are in
every lady’s trunk, and, with some stiff linings and _appliqué_ chintz
flowers, an old silk can be made into a priceless brocade.
Let us take a Venetian dress first. We will have King _Pantelon_,
the Lord of Misrule, in black with scarlet shirt and three-cornered
hat, and attended by his gay and dissolute crew. We will have the
_Illustrissimi_, wearing the dress of the ancient Venetian nobility,
scarlet cloaks, and long bag wigs, mightily disdainful; the _Chiozotti_
in black velvet, wide lace collars, and high cloth caps, adorned with
artificial flowers--they shall shower _confetti_ and make jokes; we
shall have dominoes and masks, Egyptians and Neapolitans in velvet,
with scarlet caps and stockings, clapping castanets; we shall have
Armenians, Levant merchants and sailors, Turks in caftans, Greeks and
Dalmatians, regular-featured Mussulmans, Hindoos with jet-black hair,
and Malay Lascars in many-colored turbans, fez, and scarf; grinning
soot-black negroes, Polish Jews in furred caps and long coats, Magyars
in Hessians and pelisses; Bohemian nurses in Czechen costume, a colored
handkerchief in the hair; dark-eyed young _bourgeoises_ in coquettish
black veils; elegant ladies in velvet and point lace; the gondolier,
in his picturesque sailor costume and broad sash; the Finland peasant,
with short skirts, long-dangling ear-rings, and silver pins; the
Maltese with her _fazzoletto_; an old _Contadino_, with short velveteen
knee-breeches, gaiters, and colored cotton umbrella; priests all
in black gown, shovel hat, and black silk stockings; dashing naval
officers; the _Guardia Nazionale_, and weather-beaten fishermen with
bronzed faces and red Phrygian cap. We shall have Lord Byron, pale and
melancholy, and picturesque Masaniello; the patriarchs of the Greek
Church; the Spanish beauties, the Swiss peasant, the German Mädchen;
the madcap Harlequin dress of a Spanish princess. Then there will be
all the seasons--winter, for instance, in tulle, swansdown, and spun
glass; the Marie Antoinettes, in pink brocade with long, square trains
and trimmings of Marabout feathers; the lovely Georgian costume, a
Seville gypsy, a Russian peasant; a flower-girl, a Nymph; Night and
Day; Spanish students and Flemish boors; Pages of Queen Blanche of
Castile; the beautiful white uniform of the _Dragon de Villars_; a
gothic costume; Charlemagne and his Paladins. In short--“the Carnival
of Venice.” All this was done, and well done, at a country house and
the adjacent village (a village of not more than fifteen hundred
inhabitants), and for very little money, only a few years ago.
The business is done if one only _thinks he can do it_; and there
are numbers enough to work at it. A boarding-school holiday, a
watering-place, a large town bent on “getting up something” for
charity, should have one such home behind it, where a natural-born
leader will set the whole thing going, and the picturesque shores of
Italy will give up their delights to some western town, some inland
village, some quiet and decorous hamlet of New England, where all the
inhabitants are dying of _ennui_.
But here, from the pictures of our screen, which have suggested all
this, we have been led off from Decorative Art into the business of
giving a ball! We have been entertaining a motley crowd indeed!
“The day was dull, and dark, and dreary,
It rained, and the rain was never weary.”
But see! how we have cheated the clouds! The rainy fortnight has been
the most dissipated season possible--all owing to our happy device of
getting up a fancy ball--one of the very many pleasant thoughts which
have grown out of screens and screen-making.
VIII.
EMBROIDERY AND OTHER DECORATIVE ARTS.
Let us return to our three legitimate decorations--our fan-painting,
our screen-painting, and our embroideries.
Of Embroidery the world is full, and at its best estate. The foolish
old German wool-worsted work has gone out, and in its place we have
the very elaborate church needle-work of the Middle Ages, and, better
still, its tapestry.
Some ingenious lady discovered that a plain piece of carpet made a very
good background for a rich curtain, after a few stitches of embroidery
were added; and it took but one step farther for another lady to find
in cotton velvet a good background for tapestry. The figures are
sketched on, and then the embroidery is artistically added, in the
style of the thirteenth century, when the characters were outlined by a
single line, which also designates the shape and folds of the garments.
These outlines are filled in with masses of stitches in two or three
shades of color. It is best, in making tapestry, to adhere to this
simplicity, as in attempting the later richness of the Gobelins the
work degenerates into a vulgar imitation.
And in stitching away at the tapestry frame, the well-read mamma
might give her daughters a little sketch of the history of tapestry.
How once these artistic draperies were the adornments of those stone
castles which knew no plastered walls. How they caught the story of the
“Iliad” and “Odyssey,” the scenes from the Bible, the whole story of
mythology, the history of great wars. There hangs to-day, at Blenheim,
a perfect set of pictures of the victories of the great Duke of
Marlborough, done for him by the pious Belgian nuns.
But those works anterior to the sixteenth century have the greatest
interest for the student of tapestry. Gold thread and silk were freely
used in their embellishment, and the effect is rather that of a mosaic
than of a picture. The greens are a study. They are produced with a
dark blue for the dark, and a yellow for the light tints. The wonderful
work of Matilda, called the Bayeux tapestry, wrought on brown linen;
the many historical pieces found in Italy, done in wools; and the
collections all over Europe, show a mastery over the needle which we
have lost.
But it was left for Francis I, of France, to establish the most
renowned factory for these beautiful things, when at Fontainebleau
he founded what is now the _Gobelins_. The Gobelins were two Dutch
dyers of wool, celebrated for their brilliant scarlets, who eventually
gave their name to the art, and a “Gobelin” got to mean a tapestry.
Under Louis XIV the Luxurious this manufactory attained to highest
importance. They became the Herters and Marcottes of France. Colbert,
the Prime Minister, united under one head all the different bands of
workmen who were employed on furniture and decorations for the royal
palaces of France. To the weavers of carpets and tapestry were added
embroiderers, goldsmiths, wood-carvers, dyers, etc. Charles Lebrun
and his pupils were charged with furnishing designs. Lebrun himself
furnished over twenty-four hundred designs. In 1667 Louis himself
paid a visit of state to the manufactory, accompanied by Colbert,
and examined the magnificent carpets, tapestries, silver plate, and
carvings which formed the splendid “Manufactory of Furniture to the
Crown.” This great establishment, however, went down, as Louis lost
money; and after the death of Lebrun (he was father to the wretched
husband of pretty Madame Le Brun) it returned to its original function
of producing tapestry. These Gobelin tapestries grew to be the most
wonderful reproduction of pictures ever seen.
But why, one pauses to ask, try to reproduce a picture “done in oils”
by the laborious process of needle-work or weaving? Why by process of
mosaic? It is one of the useless fancies of the human race. The old
tapestry, done by hand when there were no Gobelins, had a meaning and
a use. So has the modern tapestry done by hand. It is cheap, it is
individual, it is original; but for the Gobelins, that favorite luxury
of kings, we fail to see an excuse. However, it is very beautiful,
expensive, and rare.
The process of tapestry weaving is called the “_haute lisse_,” the warp
being placed vertically, in contradistinction to the “_basse lisse_,”
a work with a horizontal warp, as is usual. The weaver stands with the
model which he is to copy behind him. As the surface of the tapestry
must present a perfectly smooth and even surface, all cuttings must
be made on the wrong side, for the workman never sees the beautiful
work he is doing. This has been made use of in poetry in the following
simile:
“We work but blindly at the loom,
Nor see the pattern, save in parts;
Not ours to mark the gleam or bloom,
But labor on, with patient hearts.
“But when the angels overhead
The soul-wrought tapestry unfurls,
Perhaps the tears we vainly shed
May glow amid the threads--like pearls.
“The sorrow which has crushed the heart
A lily blooms, on azure field;
The strife in which we bore our part
In bud and flower may stand revealed.”
The Gobelins used gold, silver, pearls, and everything decorative
in their work, at times, to produce effect. The first Revolution
brought destruction to the Gobelins, as it did to everything else,
and many choice pieces were burned. But it rose again under the first
Napoleon, David furnishing designs. In 1871 the Communists again set
fire to the manufactory, burning up the exhibition-room. Four hundred
thousand dollars was the estimated loss. But when we remember that
there perished tapestries of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries,
including the “Acts of the Apostles” by Raphael, and the now valuable,
graceful, although affected, charming designs of Boucher, which were
wrought for Pompadour, besides historical portraits and scenes, this
seems a low estimate. The embroidery of the cartoons of Raphael, copies
of which may be seen at Hampton Court, were among the greatest of the
Gobelin triumphs.
However, to those who have walked the galleries of Florence, who have
seen there the grand and beautiful specimens of embroidered tapestry of
the sixteenth century, there will ever be a charm about old tapestry
in the crude perspective and the sudden shading. It is this, perhaps,
which can be copied. It is this to which the modern tapestry worker
should address herself, if among the amusements of home she counts the
making of curtains, and wall-coverings, and _portières_, which shall
almost suggest the possibility that they once hung in a Florentine
or a Venetian palace. A dark background of some cheap woolen stuff,
a knowledge of drawing, the silk and woolen and cotton and linen
threads now brought to our hand so cheaply--will all furnish forth the
appliances for the making of tapestry hangings, such as a castellan of
the Middle Ages would not have despised.
Painting on fans has become a very common Home Amusement, and it is
a very elegant one. The white silk fan is usually selected, although
linen, satin, and wood fans are all easy and pleasant mediums.
For painting on silk, some technical knowledge is necessary, some
gum-water, or sizing, to prevent the paint from spreading. For painting
on wood, one needs only the common water-color box, and a simple
knowledge of drawing and painting. Flowers, birds, and butterflies
are the favorite devices, monograms having gone out of fashion. It is
better, if possible, to have the silk stretched on a frame before it
is mounted on sticks, as one still sees the masterpieces of Boucher,
Watteau, and Greuze, not yet mounted, but framed, in galleries--far too
precious to mount, the Marchioness who ordered them having, perhaps,
fortunately forgotten her caprice that we may admire it.
And what pretty and pleasing and altogether historical memories come
in with the fan! It was created in primeval ages. The Egyptian ladies
had them of lotus-leaves; the Greek and Roman ladies followed. The word
_flabellum_ occurs often in the Roman literature. They also had fans of
peacock-feathers, and of some expansive material painted in brilliant
colors. They were not made to open and shut like ours; that is a modern
invention. They were stiff, with long handles, for ladies were fanned
by their slaves. The _flabellifer_, or fan-bearer, was some young
attendant, generally male, whose common business it was to carry his
mistress’s fan. Would that were the fashion now! There is a Pompeian
painting of Cupid as the fan-bearer of Ariadne, and lamenting her
desertion by Theseus. In Queen Elizabeth’s day the fan was usually made
of feathers, like the fan still used in the East. The handle was richly
ornamented, and set with stones. A fashionable lady was never without
her fan, which was chained to her girdle by a jeweled chain. A satirist
of the day, Stephen Gosson, approves of the fan if used to drive away
flies and for cooling the skin. He, however, continues scornfully:
“But seeing they were still in hand,
In house, in field, in church, in street,
In summer, winter, water, land,
In cold, in heat, in dry, in wet--
I judge they are for wives such tools
As babies are in plays for fools.”
Queen Elizabeth dropped a silver-handled fan into the moat at Amstead
Hall, which occasioned many madrigals. Sir Francis Drake presented to
his royal mistress a “fan of feathers, white and red, enameled with a
half-moon of mother-of-pearl; within that a half-moon garnished with
sparks of diamonds, and a few seed pearls on one side. Having her
Majesty’s picture within it, and on the reverse a crow.” Why not try,
young ladies, to paint a fan like this? Use silver dust to illustrate
“sparks of diamonds.” It would be a very pretty conceit.
Poor Leicester gave, as his New Year’s gift, in 1574, “a fan of white
feathers set in a handle of gold, garnished on one side with two very
fair emeralds, and fully garnished with rubies and diamonds, and on
each side a white bear (his cognizance), and two pearls hanging, a lion
romping, with a white muzzled bear at his foot.” This fan would be
difficult to copy. It was evidently a love-token from poor, ill-used
Leicester to his haughty queen. Just before Christmas, in 1595,
Elizabeth went to Kew, dined at my Lord Keeper’s house, and there was
handed her a “fine fan, with a handle garnished with diamonds.”
Fans in Shakespeare’s time seem to have been composed of
ostrich-feathers, and so on, stuck into handles. In “Love and Honor,”
by Sir William Davenant, we find the line,
“All your plate, Vasco, is the silver handle of your old prisoner’s
fan.”
Marston says:
“Another, he
Her silver-handled fan would gladly be.”
Forty pounds were often given for a fan in Elizabeth’s time. Bishop
Hall, in his “Satires,” in 1597, says:
“While one piece pays her idle waiting man,
Or buys a hood, or silver-handled fan.”
The fan of the Countess of Suffolk resembles a powder-puff.
But gentlemen carried fans in those days. We find in a manuscript in
the Ashmolean Museum, at Oxford, the following allusion: “The gentlemen
then had prodigious fans, as is to be seen in old pictures, like that
instrument which is used to dry feathers, and it had a handle at least
one half as long, with which their daughters oftentimes were corrected.
Sir Edward Cole, Lord Chief Justice, rode the circuit with such a
fan, and William Dugdale told me he was witness of it.” The Earl of
Manchester also used such a fan. “But the fathers and mothers slasht
their daughters, in the time of their besom-discipline, when they were
perfect women.” Both fashions have happily passed away. Lords Chief
Justices no longer “slash” their daughters, nor do they carry fans.
Of Catharine de Braganza (1664) we read that she and her maids walked
from Whitehall in procession to St. James’s Palace through the park
in glittering costume of silver lace in the bright morning sunshine.
Parasols being unknown in England at that era, the courtly belles used
the gigantic green shading-fans, which had been introduced by the
Queen and her Portuguese ladies, to shield their complexions from the
sun, when they did not wish wholly to obscure their charms by putting
on their masks. Both were in general use in this reign. The green
shading-fan is of Moorish origin, and for more than a century after
the marriage of Catharine of Braganza was considered an indispensable
luxury by our fair and stately ancestral dames, who used them in open
carriages, in the promenade, and at prayers, where they ostentatiously
screened their devotions from public view by spreading them before
their faces while they knelt.
But China and Japan--the home of fans--are waiting to be let in! and
as soon as the India trade was opened by Catharine’s marriage treaty,
there entered the carved ivory fan, the light bamboo and palm-leaf, the
paper fan, the silk folding fan, mounted on beautiful Japanese sticks;
all came to England about this time.
The vellum fans of France, on which Watteau first painted his
shepherdesses in hoop-petticoats, and swains in full-bottomed wigs, the
choice impossible goddesses of Boucher, with cupids and nymphs, all
came next. The history of fans, in France alone, would fill a volume;
and the neighboring kingdom of Spain, where the language of fans has
become a very serious study, would give us another volume. The fans of
tortoise-shell, enriched with jewels, are a favorite luxury of to-day.
Oliver Wendell Holmes has written a delightful poem on the “Origin
of the Fan.” In all our art loan collections there is, nowadays, an
exhibition of fans. The young student of fan-painting should strive to
see some of those of Watteau and of Boucher. Tiffany to-day turns out
some very beautiful specimens; and more than one of our artists could
admirably paint a fan or two as his contribution to Fan History.
Nothing can be prettier as a Home Amusement than fan-painting, into
which much, but not too much, Japanese suggestion should creep.
Remember, young ladies, the plea of that poor stork, of which we have
seen so much, “that he be allowed to put down his other leg!” and spare
us the gilded bird, or give him to us but seldom.
The art of Illumination, which is now studied occasionally by our
young ladies, goes wonderfully well into fan-painting. Perhaps it is
too good for it. Perhaps the same hand which can copy the old initial
letter which makes the missals rich and rare, should not condescend to
the application of the same delicate manipulation in order to ornament
a fan. But a fan of vellum, painted by an illuminator, is still a very
beautiful thing.
A fan painted to illustrate a song or a ballad is a very pretty thing.
The common linen fan, on which a clever hand draws with pencil or
ink the story of “Mary, Mary, quite contrary,” becomes a precious
possession. And in these days of Kate Greenaways and Rosina Emmets we
ought to have many charming fan decorators. We should not object if
they selected the old-fashioned _maniéré_ goddesses, hovering cupids,
smiling nymphs, and _posé_ infants of Boucher, if they would give us
his cool, pearly grays, and sweet, soft rose tints. We have had enough
of realism and ugliness, disagreeable cat-tails, and harsh, dirty Joan
of Arcs. Let us have a little beauty by way of a change, at least on
our fans. Perhaps we could “live up to it.”
Nor should we fail to note the pleasant possibility of all the
dinner-cards of a winter coming fresh from the hands of the young
ladies of the family. What infinite suggestion does one glimpse of
the garden on a June morning give to the fair artist! We can imagine
that some poetical member should thus summon and direct her sister and
brother artists in the following manner:
“Do give me, Rosamond, that spray of sweet-brier which has caught a
bit of spider-web over its sweetest pink bud. Throw in that green
dragon-fly who is about to dart through the spider’s web. Give me,
Grace, that morning-glory cup with a yellow butterfly floating over it.
It will shame the best Venetian glass of Mrs. Crœsus.
“You, Jane, paint me those dandelions, strewed by some millionaire
who is tired of his gold. You, Constance, take this volume of the old
poets, and hunt up appropriate mottoes to write under these fancies
from Nature. They shall illuminate our dinners of next winter, and
breathe the breath of Nature through our stiff conventionality. They
shall be our visitors from Titania.
“Yes, a happy thought! You, Mary, who are so akin to the fairies, give
us your kindred. Paint me Oberon and Queen Mab giving a banquet in yon
lily. What a splendid and baronial apartment! How the golden shower
falls on their royal heads from those laden stamens! True courtiers
they, who never stop flattering. Suggest, if you can, with your brush,
the perfume of luxury which is born and bred in this royal pavilion.
Show me their delicate guests. Here comes the Butterfly, most _repandu_
of beaus; and the Humming-bird, rich bachelor (hard to catch), who
dashes in for a look at the beauties, and away again--you can put him
in; he is a type for a dinner-card.
“And you, Paul, who are of a strong, masculine, satirical turn,
shall make all these frogs and toads into guests in another set of
dinner-cards. Give me the frog as an Ambassador. I like his pouting
throat, his puffy air--it so simulates importance. How grand and
disdainful he is! I declare, he looks so like old Mr. ----! But do not
make a portrait; that would give offense. These toads are just about as
lively and as brilliant as the rank and file of diners-out. Put them
all in Worth dresses. Make the dishes on the table after Hawthorne’s
delicate fancy, the shapes of summer vegetables--squashes, cucumbers,
pea-pods. What is that pretty poem I remember about Pods?
“‘The Monk’s-hood and the Shepherd’s-purse,
And the Poppy’s pepper-caster;
The Rose’s scarlet reticule,
And the somber box of the Aster;
Nasturtion’s biting brandy-flask,
Infused with a wholesome smart;
And the Milkweed’s knot of white floss silk,
Which will not come apart;
For next to the bud where the Poppy nods,
And the sweet Moss-rose--are the late Seed-pods.’”
“Yes,” said Mary, “pods are very pretty.”
Well, we have, perhaps, talked nonsense enough about the dinner-cards.
It is a pretty Home Amusement for the back piazza in summer, or for
the close and guarded warm home parlor of winter. Give us the results
of both, young ladies. And since all the wealthy chromo people are
offering such splendid sums for the Christmas, Easter, and even
advertising cards, why should not every group try their hand at
the--perhaps--thousand dollar prize?