Tapestry is neither real weaving nor true embroidery, but in a manner
unites in its working those two processes into one. Though wrought in
a loom and upon a warp stretched out along its frame, it has no woof
thrown across those threads with a shuttle or any like appliance but
its weft is done with many short threads, all variously coloured and
put in by a needle. It is not embroidery, though so very like it, for
tapestry is not worked upon what is really a web, having both warp and
woof, but upon a series of closely set fine strings.
From the way in which tapestry is spoken of in Holy Writ we may be sure
that the art is very old; and if it did not take its first rise in
Egypt, we are led by the same authority to conclude that it soon became
successfully cultivated by the people of that land. The woman in the
book of Proverbs says: “I have woven my bed with cords. I have covered
it with painted tapestry, brought from Egypt.” We find, therefore, not
only that it was employed as an article of household furniture among
the Israelites, but that the Egyptians were the makers.
From Egypt through western Asia the art of tapestry-making found its
way to Europe, and after many ages at last to England. Among the other
manual labours followed in religious houses this handicraft was one;
and monks became some of the best workmen. The altars and the walls of
their churches were hung with tapestry. Matthew Paris tells us that
among other ornaments which, in the reign of Henry the first, abbot
Geoffrey had made for his church of St. Alban’s were three reredoses;
the first a large one wrought with the finding of the body of St.
Alban; the other two figured with the parables of the man who fell
among thieves, and of the prodigal son. While in London in the year
1316 Simon abbot of Ramsey bought looms, staves, shuttles, and a slay:
“pro weblomes emptis xx^s. Et pro staves ad easdem vj^d. Item pro iiij
shittles pro eodem opere ij^s vj^d. Item in j. slay pro textoribus
viij^d.” Collier, in his history, quotes a letter from Giffard, one of
the commissioners for the suppression of the smaller houses, written
to Cromwell; in which he says, speaking of the monastery of Wolstrope
in Lincolnshire: “Not one religious person there but that he can and
doth use either imbrothering, writing books with very fair hand, making
their own garments, carving, painting, or graving, etc.”
We may collect from Chaucer that working tapestry was not an uncommon
trade; among his pilgrims he mentions in the prologue,
An haberdasher and a carpenter,
A webbe, a dyer, and a tapisser.
Pieces of English-made tapestry still remain. That fine though greatly
damaged specimen at St. Mary’s hall, Coventry, representing the
marriage of Henry the sixth, is one; a second is the curious reredos
for an altar, belonging to the vintner’s company; this last is figured
with St. Martin on horseback cutting his cloak in two that he might
give one half to a poor man, and with St. Dunstan singing mass. A
third piece, of large size and in good preservation, is in private
possession, and hangs upon the wall in a house in Cornwall. It is one
of four pieces, of which two have been lost, representing the marriage
of Henry the seventh and Elizabeth of York; and was probably made about
the year 1490.
The art of weaving tapestry was successfully followed in many parts of
France and throughout ancient Flanders; where secular trade-guilds
were formed for its especial manufacture in many of the towns. Several
of these places won for themselves an especial fame; but so far, at
last, did Arras outrun them all that arras-work came to be the common
word, both here and on the continent, to mean all sorts of tapestry,
whether wrought in England or abroad. Thus the fine hangings for the
choir of Canterbury cathedral, now at Aix-en-Provence, though probably
made at home by his own monks and given to that church by prior
Goldston in 1595, are spoken of as arras-work: “de arysse subtiliter
intextos.”
[Illustration: Banner of the tapestry workers of Lyons.]
Arras is but one among other terms by which, during the middle ages,
tapestry was called. Its earliest name was Saracenic work; “opus
Saracenicum;” and, at first, tapestry was wrought as in the east, in
a low or horizontal loom. The artisans of France and Flanders were
the first to introduce the upright or vertical frame, afterwards
known abroad as “de haute lisse,” in contradistinction to the low or
horizontal frame called “de basse lisse.” Workmen who kept to the
unimproved loom were known, in the trade, as Saracens, for retaining
the method of their paynim teachers; and their work, Saracenic. In
the year 1339 John de Croisettes, a Saracen-tapestry worker living
at Arras, sells to the duke of Touraine a piece of gold Saracenic
tapestry figured with the story of Charlemagne: “Jean de Croisettes,
tapissier Sarrazinois demeurant à Arras, vend au duc de Touraine un
tapis sarrazinois à or de l’histoire de Charlemaine.” The high frame,
however, soon superseded the low one; and among the pieces of tapestry
belonging to Philippe duke of Bourgogne and Brabant many are especially
entered as of the high frame; one of which is thus described: “ung
grant tapiz de haulte lice, sauz or, de l’istoire du duc Guillaume de
Normandie comment il conquist Engleterre.” A very fine example is still
to be seen in the collection at the Louvre, representing the history of
St. Martin.
[Illustration: The legend of St. Martin.--From a piece of tapestry of
the fourteenth century in the Louvre.]
With the upright, as with the flat frame, the workman had to grope in
the dark a great deal upon his path. In both, he was obliged to put
in the threads on the back or wrong side of the piece, following his
sketch as best he could behind the strings or warp. As the face was
downward in the flat frame it was much less easy to observe and correct
a fault. In the upright frame he might go in front, and with his own
work in open view on one hand and the original design full before him
on the other, he could mend as he went on, step by step, the smallest
mistake, were it but a single thread. Put side by side, when finished,
the pieces from the upright frame were in beauty and perfection far
beyond those from the flat one. We can scarcely particularize the
details in which that superiority consisted, for not one single flat
sample is to be identified as certain from evidence within our reach.
It is possible that at South Kensington the specimens nos. 1296 and
1465 are “Saracenic;” that is, wrought in the low flat loom, or “de
basse lisse;” but all the rest are of the “de haute lisse,” worked in
the upright frame. The “weaver” is among the trades engraved in the
curious volume printed at Frankfort in 1574, _de mechanicis artibus_,
with plates by Amman.
When the illuminators of manuscripts began to put in golden shadings
all over their painting the tapestry-workers did the same. Such a
manner cannot be relied on as a criterion whereby to judge of the exact
place where any specimen of tapestry had been wrought, or to tell its
precise age. To work figures on a golden ground and to shade garments,
buildings, and landscapes with gold, are two different things.
Upon several pieces at South Kensington gold thread has been very
plentifully used, but the metal is of so debased a quality that it has
become almost black.
The use of tapestry for church decoration and household furniture, both
in England and abroad, was for a long period very great. Many large
pieces, mostly of a scriptural character, were provided by cardinal
Wolsey for his palace at Hampton court. In the next generation, a very
famous set was made in Flanders, which for many years decorated the
walls of the House of Lords: it represented the defeat of the Spanish
Armada. This magnificent memorial was destroyed in the fire of 1834.
One fragment only is known to exist. This piece was cut out to make
way for a gallery at the time of the trial of queen Caroline, and was
secreted by a German servant of the Lord Chamberlain. The relic was
bought some years after for £20 and presented to the corporation of
Plymouth, who still possess it.
[Illustration: The Weaver; from the engraving by J. Amman.]
The most beautiful series now in the world is in the Vatican at Rome,
and may be judged of by looking at a few of the original cartoons (at
present in the S. K. museum). Duke Cosimo tried to set up tapestry work
at Florence but did not succeed. Later, Rome produced some good things;
among others, the fine copy of Da Vinci’s Last Supper still hung up on
Maunday Thursday. England made several attempts to re-introduce the
manufacture: first at Mortlake, then afterwards in London, at Soho.
Works from these two establishments may be met with. At Northumberland
house there was a room hung with large pieces of tapestry wrought at
Soho, and for that mansion, in the year 1758. The designs were by
Francesco Zuccherelli and consisted of landscapes composed of hills
crowned here and there with the standing ruins of temples or strewed
with broken columns, among which groups of country folks are wandering
and amusing themselves. Mortlake and Soho were failures. Not so the
Gobelins at Paris, as every one well knows.
In many English houses, especially in the country, good samples of
late Flemish tapestry may be found. Close to London, Holland house
is adorned with some curious specimens, particularly in the raised
style. An earlier example (engraved on the next page) of the fifteenth
century, representing the marriage of Louis XII. and Anne of Brittany
is in a foreign collection.
Imitated tapestry existed here long ago under the name of “stayned
cloth,” and the workers of it were embodied into a London guild. At the
beginning of the sixteenth century Exeter cathedral had several pieces
of old painted or “stayned” cloth: “i front stayned cum crucifixo,
Maria et Johanne, Petro et Paulo; viij panni linei stayned, etc.” The
great use at that time of such articles in household furniture may be
witnessed in the will, 1503, of Katherine lady Hastings who bequeaths,
besides several other such pieces, “an old hangin of counterfeit arres
of Knollys, which now hangeth in the hall and all such hangyings of
old bawdekyn, or lynen paynted as now hang in the chappell.” We may
also remember that Falstaff speaks of it as an illustration easily
understood; he says that his troops are “as ragged as Lazarus in the
painted cloth.”
Carpets are akin to tapestry, and though the use of them may perhaps
be not so ancient yet is very old. Here, again, we must look to the
people of Asia for the finest as well as the earliest examples of
this textile. Mediæval specimens are rare anywhere, and we are glad to
recommend attention to two pieces of that period fortunately in the
collection at South Kensington, no. 8649, of the fourteenth century,
and no. 8357, of the sixteenth, both of Spanish make.
[Illustration: Marriage of Louis XII. and Anne of Brittany.]
The chambers of our royal palaces and the chancels of our parish
churches used to be strewed with rushes. When however they could afford
it the authorities of our cathedrals, even in very early times, spread
the sanctuary with carpets; and at last old tapestry came to be so
employed, as now in Italy. Among such coverings for the floor before
the altar Exeter had a large piece of Arras cloth figured with the life
of the duke of Burgundy, the gift of one of its bishops, Edmund Lacy,
in 1420; besides two large carpets, one bestowed by bishop Nevill in
1456, the other, of a chequered pattern, by lady Elizabeth Courtney:
“carpet et panni coram altari sternendi; i pannus de Arys de historia
ducis Burgundie; i larga carpeta, etc.” In an earlier inventory we
find that among the “bancaria” or bench-coverings in the choir of the
same cathedral, one was a large piece of English-made tapestry with a
fretted pattern. It is very probable that as the work of the Record
Commission goes on, and our ancient historians are printed, evidence
may be found that the looms at work in all our great monasteries among
other webs wrought carpets. From existing testimony we believe that
such must have been the practice at Croyland, where abbot Egelric (the
second of the name) gave to that church, before the year 992, “two
large foot-cloths [so carpets were then called] woven with lions to be
laid out before the high altar on great festivals, and two shorter ones
trailed all over with flowers, for the feast days of the apostles.” The
quantity of carpeting in our palaces may be seen by the way in which
Leland tells us that “my lady the queen’s rooms” were strewed with them
“when she took her chamber.”