AUBUSSON
Perhaps because of certain old and elegant carpets lying under-foot in
the glow and shadows of old drawing-rooms that we love, the name of
Aubusson is one of interesting meaning. And yet history of tapestry
weaving at Aubusson lacks the importance that gilds the Gobelins and
Beauvais.
It just escaped that _sine qua non_, the dower of a king's favour. But
let us be chronological, and not anticipate.
If antiquity is the thing, Aubusson claims it. There is in the town
this interesting tradition that when the invincible Charles Martel
beat the enemies of Christianity and hammered out the word peace with
his sword-blade, a lot of the subdued Saracens from Spain remained in
the neighbourhood. It was at Poitiers in 732 that the final blow was
given to show the hordes of North Africa that while a part of Spain
might be theirs, they must stop below the Pyrenees.
When swords are put by, the empty hand turns to its accustomed crafts
of peace. Poitiers is a weary journey from Africa if the land ways are
hostile, and all to be traversed afoot. Rather than return, the
conquered Saracens stayed, so runs the legend of Aubusson, and quite
naturally fell into their home-craft of weaving. They had a pretty
gift indeed to bestow, for at that time, as in ages before, the
world's best fabrics came from the luxurious East. And so the
Saracens, defeated at Poitiers by Charles Martel, wandered to nearby
Aubusson, wove their cloths and gave the town the chance to set its
earliest looms at a date far back in the past.
The centuries went on, however, without much left in the way of
history-fabric or woven fabric until we approach the time when
tapestry-history begins all over France, like sparse flowers glowing
here and there in the early spring wood.
When the Great Louis, with Colbert at his sumptuous side, was by way
of patronising magnificently those arts which contributed to his own
splendour, he set his all-seeing eye upon Aubusson, and thought to
make it a royal factory.
He was far from establishing it--that was more than accomplished
already, not so much by the legendary Saracens as by the busy populace
who had as early as 1637 as many as two thousand workers. Going back a
little farther we find a record of four tapestries woven there for
Rheims.
It was, perhaps, this very prosperity, this ability to stand alone
that made Louis and Colbert think it worth while to patronise the
works at Aubusson. But it must be said that at this time (1664) the
factory was deteriorating. Tapestry works are as sensitive as the
veriest exotic, and without the proper conditions fail and fade. The
wrong matter here was primarily the cartoons, which were of the
poorest. No artist controlled them, and the workers strayed far from
the copy set long before. Added to that, the wool was of coarse,
harsh quality and the dyeing was badly done. All three faults
remediable, thought the two chief forces in the kingdom.
So Louis XIV announced to the sixteen hundred weavers of Aubusson that
he would give their works the conspicuous privilege of taking on the
name of the Royal Manufactory at Aubusson. And, moreover, he declared
his wish to send them an artist to draw worthily, and a master of the
important craft of dyeing fast and lovely colours.
Colbert drew up a series of articles and stipulations, long papers of
rules and restrictions which were considered a necessary part of fine
tapestry weaving. These papers are tiresome to read--the constitution
of many a nation or a state is far less verbose. They give the
impression that the craft of tapestry weaving is beset with every sort
of small deceit, so protection must be the arrangement between master
and worker, and between the factory and the great outside world, lying
in wait to tear with avaricious claws any fabric, woven or written,
that this document leaves unprotected. You get, too, the impression
that weavers took themselves a little too seriously. There must have
been other arts and crafts in the world than theirs, but if so these
men of long documents ignored it.
Aubusson, then, took heart at the encouragement of the king and his
prime minister, enjoyed their fine new title to flaunt before the
world which lacked it, pored over their new Articles of Faith, and
awaited the new artist and the new alchemist of colours.
But Louis XIV was a busy man, and Paris presented enough activity to
consume all his hours but the scant group he allowed himself for
sleep. So Aubusson was forgot. Wars and pleasures both ravaged the
royal purse, and no money was left for indulgences to a tapestry
factory lying leagues distant from Paris and the satisfying Gobelins.
Then came the agitation of religious conflict during which Louis XIV
was persuaded, coerced, nagged into the condition of mind which made
him put pen to the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, the document
that is ever playing about the fortunes of tapestry weaving. This was
in 1685. Aubusson had struggled along on hope for twenty years, under
its epithet Royal, but now it had to lose its best workers to the
number of two hundred. The Protestants had ever been among the best
workers in Louis' kingdom, and by his prejudice he lost them. Germany
received some of the fugitives, notably, Pierre Mercier.
Near Aubusson were Felletin and Bellegarde, the three towns forming
the little group of factories of La Marche. When the king's act
brought disaster to Aubusson, her two neighbours suffered equally.
There was also another reason for a sagging of prosperity. Beauvais
was rapidly gaining in size and importance under the patronage of the
king and the wise rule of its administrators. Beauvais with her
high- and low-warp looms, her artists from Paris and her privilege to
sell in the open market, lured from Aubusson the patronage that might
have kept her strong.
Thus things went on to the end of the Seventeenth Century and the
first quarter of the Eighteenth. Then in 1731 came deliverers in the
persons of the painters, Jean Joseph du Mons and Pierre de Montezert,
and an able dyer who aided them. Prosperity began anew. Not the
prosperity of the first half of the Seventeenth Century, which was its
best period, but a strong, healthy productiveness which has lasted
ever since. Two articles of faith it adheres to--that the looms shall
be invariably low, and that the threads of the warp shall be of wool
and wool only.
Large quantities of strong-colour verdures from La Marche and notably
from Aubusson are offered to the buyer throughout France. They are as
easily adapted to the wood panels of a modern dining-room as is stuff
by the yard, the pattern being merely a mass of trees divisible almost
anywhere. The colour scheme is often worked out in blues instead of
greens; a narrow border is on undisturbed pieces, and the reverse of
the tapestry is as full of loose threads as the back of a cashmere
rug. For the most part these fragments are the work of the Eighteenth
Century. Older ones, with warmer colours introduced bring much higher
prices.