ANTIQUITY
Egypt and China, India and Persia, seem made to take the conceit from
upstart nations like those of Europe and our own toddling America.
Directly we scratch the surface and look for the beginning of applied
arts, the lead takes us inevitably to the oldest civilisation. It
would seem that in a study of fabrics which are made in modern Europe,
it were enough to find their roots in the mediaeval shades of the dark
ages; but no, back we must go to the beginning of history where man
leaped from the ambling dinosaur, which then modestly became extinct,
and looking upon the lands of the Nile and the Yangtsi-kiang found
them good, and proceeded to pre-empt all the ground of applied arts,
so that from that time forward all the nations of the earth were and
are obliged to acknowledge that there is nothing new under the sun.
In the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York is a bit of tapestry,
Coptic, that period where Greek and Egyptian drawing were intermixed,
a woman's head adorned with much vanity of head-dress, woven two or
three centuries after Christ. (Plate facing page 15.) In the Boston
Museum of Fine Arts are other rare specimens of this same time.
(Plates facing pages 16 and 17.) Looking further back, an ancient
decoration shows Penelope at her high loom, four hundred years before
the Christian era; and one, still older, shows the Egyptians weaving
similarly three thousand years before that epoch.
It is not altogether thrilling to read that civilised people of
ancient times wove fabrics for dress and decoration, but it certainly
is interesting to learn that they were masters of an art which we
carelessly attribute to Europe of six centuries back, and to find that
the weaving apparatus and the mode of work were almost identical. The
Coptic tapestry of the Third Century is woven in the same manner as
the tapestries that come to us from Europe as the flower of
comparatively recent times, and its dyes and treatment of shading are
identical with the Gothic times. Penelope's loom as pictured on an
ancient vase, is the same in principle as the modern high-warp loom,
although lacking a bit in convenience to the weaver; and so we can
easily imagine the lovely lady at work on her famous web, "playing for
time," during Ulysses' absence, when she sat up o' nights undoing her
lovely stint of the day.
And the Egyptian loom shown in ancient pictures--that is even more
modern than Penelope's, although it was set up three thousand years
before, a last guide-post on the backward way to the misty land called
prehistoric.
But as there is really little interest except for the archeologist in
digging so far into the past for an art that has left us but
traditions and museum fragments, let us skim but lightly the surface
of this time, only picking up the glistening facts that attract the
mind's eye, so that we may quickly reach the enchanted land of more
recent times which yet appear antique to the modern.
[Illustration: COPTIC TAPESTRY
Boston Museum of Fine Arts]
[Illustration: COPTIC TAPESTRY
Boston Museum of Fine Arts]
There are those to whom reading the Bible was a forced task during
childhood, a class which slipped the labour as soon as years gave
liberty of choice. There are others who have always turned as
naturally to its accounts of grand ceremony and terrible battles as to
the accounts of Caesar, Coeur de Lion, Charlemagne. But in either case,
whatever the reason for the eye to absorb these pages of ancient
Hebrew history, the impression is gained of superb pomp. And always
concerned with it are descriptions of details, lovingly impressed, as
though the chronicler was sure of the interest of his audience. In
this enumeration, decorative textiles always played a part. Such
textiles as they were exceed in extravagance of material any that we
know of European production, for in many cases they were woven
entirely of gold and silver, and even set with jewels. These gorgeous
fabrics shone like suns on the magnificent pomp of priest and ruler,
and declared the wealth and power of the nation. They departed from
the original intention of protecting shivering humanity from chill
draughts or from close and cold association with the stones of
architectural construction, and became a luxury of the eye, a source
of bewilderment to the fancy and a lively intoxication to those
who--irrespective of class, or of century--love to compute display in
coin.
But, dipping into the history of one ancient country after another, it
is easy to see that the usual fabric for hanging was woven of wool, of
cotton and of silk, and carried the design in the weaving. Babylon
the great, Egypt under the Pharaohs, Greece in its heroic times, Rome
under the Emperors--not omitting China and India of the Far
East--these countries of ancient peoples all knew the arts of dyeing
and weaving, of using the materials that we employ, and of introducing
figures symbolic, geometric, or realistic into the weaving. Beyond a
doubt the high loom has been known to man since prehistoric times. It
may be discouraging to those who like to feel that tapestry properly
belongs to Europe only,--Europe of the last six centuries--to find
that the art has been sifted down through the ages; but in reality it
is but one more link between us and the centuries past, the human
touch that revivifies history, that unites humanity. People of the
past wear a haze about them, are immovable and rigid as their pictured
representations. The Assyrian is to us a huge man of impossible beard,
the Egyptian is a lean angle fixed in posture, the Greek is eternally
posed for the sculptor.
But once we can find that these people were not forever transfixed to
frieze, but were as simple, as industrious, as human as we, the
kinship is established, and through their veins begins to flow the
stream that is common to all humanity. These people felt the same need
for elegantly covering the walls of their homes that we in this
country of new homes feel, and the craftsmen led much the same lives
as do craftsmen of to-day. Even in the matter of expense, of money
which purchasers were willing to spend for woven decorative fabrics,
we see no novelty in the high prices of to-day, the Twentieth
Century. _The Mantle of Alcisthenes_ is celebrated for having been
bought by the Carthaginians for the equal of a hundred thousand
dollars.
[Illustration: TAPESTRY FOUND IN GRAVES IN PERU
Date prior to Sixteenth Century]
Thus we connect ourselves with the remote past in making a continuous
history. But as the purpose of this book is to assist the owner of
tapestries to understand the story of his hangings and to enable the
purchaser or collector to identify tapestries on his own knowledge
instead of through the prejudiced statements of the salesman, it is
useless to dwell long upon the fabrics that we can only see through
exercise of the imagination or in disintegrated fragments in museums.
Then away with Circe and her leisure hours of weaving, with Helen and
her heroic canvas, and the army of grandiose Biblical folk, and let us
come westward into Europe in short review of the textiles called
tapestry which were produced from the early Christian centuries to the
time of the Crusades, and thus will we approach more modern times.
So far as known, high-warp weaving was not universally used in Europe
in the first part of the Middle Ages. Whether plain or figured, most
of the fabrics of that time that have come down to us for hangings or
for clothing, are woven, with the decorative pattern executed by the
needle on woven cloth. In Persia and neighbouring states, however, the
high-warp loom was used.[1]
Europe in the Middle Ages was a place so savage, so devastated by war
and by neighbouring malice, that to consider it is to hear the clash
of steel, to feel the pangs of hunger, to experience the fearsome
chill of dungeons or moated castles. It was a time when those who
could huddle in fortresses mayhap died natural deaths, but those who
lived in the world were killed as a matter of course. Man was man's
enemy and to be killed on sight.
In such gay times of carnage, art is dead. Men there were who drew
designs and executed them, for the _luxe_ of the eye is ever
demanding, but the designs were timid and stunted and came far from
the field of art. Fabrics were made and worn, no doubt, but when looms
were like to be destroyed and the weavers with them, scant attention
was given to refinements.
By the time the Tenth Century was reached matters had improved. We
come into the light of records. It is positively known that the town
of Saumur, down in the lovely country below Tours, became the
destination of a quantity of wall-hangings, carpets, curtains, and
seat covers woven of wool. This was by order of the third Abbot Robert
of the Monastery of St. Florent, one of those vigorous, progressive
men whose initiative inspires a host. It is recorded that he also
ordered two pieces of tapestry executed, not of wool exclusively, but
with silk introduced, and in these the figures of the designs were the
beasts that were then favourites in decoration and that still showed
the influence of Oriental drawing.
Before enumerating other authentic examples of early tapestries it is
well to speak of the reason for their being invariably associated with
the church. The impression left by history is that folk of those days
must have been universally religious when not cutting each other in
bits with bloody cutlass. The reason is, of course, that when poor
crushed humanity began to revive from the devastating onslaughts of
fierce Northern barbarians, it was with a timid huddling in
monasteries, for there was found immunity from attack. The lord of the
castle was forced to go to war or to resist attack in his castle, but
the monastery was exempt from whatever conscription the times imposed,
and frocked friars were always on hand were defence needed. Thus it
came about that monasteries became treasure-houses, the only safe
ones, were built strong, were sufficiently manned, and therefore were
the safe-deposit of whatever articles of concentrated value the great
lord of the Middle Ages might accumulate. Many tapestries thus
deposited became gifts to the institution which gave them asylum.
The arts and crafts of the Middle Ages were in the hands of the
monasteries, monks and friars being the only persons with safety and
leisure. Weaving fell naturally to them to execute as an art. In the
castles, necessary weaving for the family was done by the women, as on
every great lord's domains were artisans for all crafts; and great
ladies emulated Penelope and Helen of old in passing their hours of
patience and anxiety with fabricating gorgeous cloths. But these are
exceptional, and deal with such grand ladies as Queen Matilda, who
with her maidens embroidered (not wove) the Bayeux Tapestry, and with
the Duchess Gonnor, wife of Richard First, who embroidered for the
church of Notre Dame at Rouen a history of the Virgin and Saints.[2]
To the monasteries must be given the honour of preserving this as
many other arts, and of stimulating the laity which had wealth and
power to present to religious institutions the best products of the
day. The subjects executed inside the monastery were perforce
religious, many revelling in the horrors of martyrology, and those
intended as gifts or those ordered by the clergy were religious in
subject for the sake of appropriateness. It is interesting to note the
sweet childlike attitude of all lower Europe toward the church in
these years, a sort of infantile way of leaving everything in its
hands, all knowledge, all wisdom, all power. It was not even necessary
to read or write, as the clergy conveniently concerned themselves with
literacy. As late as the beginning of the Fifteenth Century Philip the
Hardy, the great Duke of Burgundy, in ordering a tapestry, signed the
order, not with his autograph, for he could not, but with his mark,
for he, too, left pen-work to the clerks of the church.
That pile of concentrated royal history, the old abbey of St. Denis,
received, late in the Tenth Century, one of the evidences of royal
patronage that every abbey must have envied. It was a woven
representation of the world, as scientists of that day imagined our
half-discovered planet, and was presented by Queen Adelaide, the wife
of Hugh Capet, whose descendants reigned for three hundred years.[3]
While dealing with records rather than with objects on which the eye
can gaze and the hand can rest, note must be made of an order of a
Count of Poitou, William V, to a factory for tapestries then existing
in Poitiers, showing that the art of weaving had in that spot jumped
the monastery walls in 1025.[4] The order was for a large hanging with
subjects taken from the Scriptures, but given the then modern touch by
introducing portraits of kings and emperors and their favourite
animals transfixed in ways peculiar to the nature of the day.
A century later, another Abbot of St. Florent in Saumur had hangings
made important enough to be recorded. One of these represented the
four and twenty elders of the Apocalypse with musical instruments, and
other subjects taken from the Revelation of John. This subject was one
of unending interest to the artists of that time who seemed to find in
its depicting a serving of both God and imagination.
Among the few tapestries of this period, those of the Cathedral at
Halberstadt must be mentioned, partly by way of conscientious
chronicling, partly that the interested traveller may, as he travels,
know where to find the rare specimens of the hobby he is pursuing.
This is a high-warp tapestry which authorities variously place as the
product of the Eleventh or the Twelfth Centuries. Entirely regardless
of its age, it has for us the charm of the craft of hands long
vanished, and of primitive art in all its simplicity of artifice. The
subject is religious--could hardly have been otherwise in those
monastic days--and for church decoration, and to fit the space they
were woven to occupy, each of the two parts was but three and a half
feet high although more than fourteen yards long.
Each important event recorded in history has its expression in the
material product of its time, and this is one of the charms of
studying the liberal arts. Tapestry more than almost any other
handicraft has left us a pictured history of events in a time when
records were scarce. The effect of the Crusades was noticeable in the
impetus it gave to tapestry, not only by bringing Europe into fresh
contact with Oriental design but by increasing the desire for
luxurious stuffs. The returning crusaders--what traveller's tales did
they not tell of the fabrics of the great Oriental sovereigns and
their subjects, the soft rugs, the tent coverings, the gorgeous
raiment; and these tales they illustrated with what fragments they
could port in their travellers' packs. Here lay inspiration for a
continent.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Eugene Muentz, "History of Tapestry."
[2] Jubinal, "Recherches," Vol. I.
[3] F. Michel, "Recherches."
[4] Jubinal, "Recherches."