TAPESTRY MARKS
Regardless of what a man's longing for fame may have been in the
Middle Ages, he let his works pass into the world without a sign upon
them that portrayed their author. This is as true of the lesser arts
as of the greater. It was not the fashion in the days of Giotto, nor
of Raphael, to sign a painting in vermillion with a flourished
underscore. The artist was content to sink individuality in the
general good, to work for art's sake, not for personal fame.
This was true of the lesser artists who wove or directed the weaving
of the tapestries called Gothic, not only through the time of the
simple earnest primitives, but through the brilliant high development
of that style as shown at the studio of Jean de Rome, of the Brussels
ateliers, through the years lying between the close of the Fifteenth
Century and the Raphael invasion.
Even that important event brought no consequence of that sort. The
freemasonry among celebrities in those days showed its perfection by
this very lack of signed work. Everybody knew the man by his works,
and the works by their excellence.
Tapestry marks were non-existent as a system until the Brussels edict
of 1528 made them compulsory in that town. Documents and history have
been less unkind to those early workers, and to those of us who like
to feel the thrill of human brotherhood as it connects the artist and
craftsman centuries dead with our own strife for the ideal. Nicolas
Bataille in 1379 cannot remain unknown since the publishing of certain
documents concerning his Christmas task of the _Apocalypse_, and there
are scores of known master weavers reaching up through the ages to the
time when marks began.
The Brussels mark was the first. It was a simple and appropriate
composition, a shield flanked with two letters B. These were capitals
or not. One was reversed or not, with little arbitrariness, for the
mark was legible and unmistakable in any case, even though the weaver
took great liberties--as he sometimes did. The place for this mark was
the galloon, and it was usually executed in a lighter colour, but a
single tone.
[Illustration: BRUSSELS]
So much for the town mark, which has a score or more of variations. In
addition to this was the mark of the weaver or of the merchant who
gave the commission. A pity it was thus to confound the two, to give
such confusion between a gifted craftsman and a mere dealer. One was
giving the years of his life and the cunning of his hand to the work,
while the other did but please a rich or royal patron with his wares.
But so it was, and we can but study over the symbols and glean at
least that the tapestry was considered a worthy one, reached the high
standard of the day, or it would have had no mark at all.
For it was thus that the marks were first adopted. They were for the
protection of every one against fraud. High perfection made Brussels
famous, but fame brought with it such a rush of patronage that only by
lessening the quality of productions could orders be filled in such
hot haste.
Tricks of the trade grew and prospered; there were tricks of dyeing
after a tapestry was finished, in case the flesh tints or other light
shades were not pleasing. There was a trick of dividing a large square
into strips so that several looms might work upon it at once. And
there was all manner of slighting in the weave, in the use of the comb
which makes close the fabric, in the setting of the warp to make a
less than usual number of threads to the inch. In fact, men tricked
men as much in those days as in our own.
The fame of the city's industry was in danger. It was the province of
the guild of tapestry-makers to protect it against its own evils.
Thus, in 1528, a few years after the weaving of the Raphael
tapestries, the law was made that all tapestries should bear the
Brussels mark and that of the weaver or the client. Small tapestries
were exempt, but at that time small tapestries were not frequent, or
were simple verdures, and, charming as they are, they lacked the same
intellectual effort of composition.
The Brussels guild stipulated the size at which the tapestry should be
marked. It was given at six ells, a Flemish ell being about 271/2
inches. Therefore, a tapestry under approximately thirteen feet might
escape the order. But that was the day of large tapestries, the day
of the Italian cartoonists, and important pieces reached that measure.
The guild of the tapissiers in Brussels, once started on restrictions,
drew article after article, until it seemed that manacles were put on
the masters' hands. To these restrictions the decadence of Brussels is
ascribed, but that were like laying a criminal's fault to the laws of
the country. Primarily must have been the desire to shirk, the intent
to do questionable work. And behind that must have been a basic cause.
Possibly it was one of those which we are apt to consider modern, that
is, the desire to turn effort into the coin of the realm. All of the
enormous quantity of orders received by Brussels in the days of her
highest prosperity could not have been accepted had not the master of
the ateliers pressed his underlings to highest speed.
Speed meant deterioration in quality of work, and so Brussels tried by
laws to prevent this lamentable result, and to protect the fair fame
of the symbol woven in the bordering galloon. The other sign which
accompanied the town mark, of the two letters B, should have had
excellent results, the personal mark of the weaver that his work might
be known.
In spite of this spur to personal pride, the standard lessened in a
few years, but not until certain weavers had won a fame that thrills
even at this distance. Unfortunately, a great client was considered as
important as a weaver, and it was often his arbitrary sign that was
woven. And sometimes a dealer, wishing glory through his dealings,
ordered his sign in the galloon. And thus comes a long array of signs
which are not identifiable always. In general, one or two initials
were introduced into these symbols, which were fanciful designs that
any idle pencil might draw, but in the lapse of years it is not
possible to know which able weaver or what great purveyor to royalty
the letter A or B or C may have signified.
Happily the light of Wilhelm de Pannemaker could not be hid even by
piling centuries upon it. His works were of such a nature that, like
those of Van Aelst, who had no mark, they would always be known for
their historic association. In illustration, there is his set of the
_Conquest of Tunis_ (plate facing page 62), woven under circumstances
of interest. Even without a mark, it would still be known that the
master weaver of Brussels (whom all acknowledged Pannemaker to be) set
up his looms, so many that it must have seemed to the folk of Granada
that a new industry had come to live among them. And it is a matter of
Spanish history that the great Emperor Charles V carried in his train
the court artist, Van Orley, that his exploits be pictured for the
gratification of himself and posterity.
But Wilhelm de Pannemaker lived and worked in the time of marks, so
his tapestries bear his sign in addition to the Brussels mark. Of
symbols he had as many as nine or ten, but all of the same general
character, taking as their main motive the W and the P of his name.
[Illustration: WILHELM DE PANNEMAKER]
Incorporated into his sign, as into many others of the period, was a
mark resembling a figure 4. Tradition has it that when this four was
reversed, the tapestry was not for a private client, but for a dealer.
One set of the _Vertumnus and Pomona_ at Madrid (plates facing pages
72, 73, 74, 75) bears De Pannemaker's mark, while others have a
conglomerate pencilling.
The sign of Jacques Geubels is, like W. de Pannemaker's, made up of
his initials combined with fantastic lines which doubtless were full
of meaning to their inventor, little as they convey to us. The example
of Jacques Geubels' weaving given in the plate is from the Chicago
Institute of Art. His time was late Sixteenth Century.
The _Acts of the Apostles_ of Raphael, the first set, was woven by
Peter van Aelst without a mark, but the set at Madrid bears the marks
of several Brussels weavers, some attributed to Nicolas Leyniers.
The desirability of distinguishing tapestries by marks in the galloon
appealed to other weaving centres, and the method of Brussels found
favour outside that town. Presently Bruges adopted a sign similar to
that of her neighbour, by adding to the double B and shield a small b
traversed by a crown.
[Illustration: JACQUES GEUBELS]
[Illustration: NICOLAS LEYNIERS]
[Illustration: BRUGES]
In Oudenarde, that town of wonderful verdures, the weavers, as though
by trick of modesty, often avoided such clues to identity as a woven
letter might be, and adopted signs. However significant and famous
they may have been in the Sixteenth Century, they mean little now. The
town mark with which these were combined was distinctly a striped
shield with decoration like antennae.
[Illustration: OUDENARDE]
Enghien is one of the tapestry towns of which we are gradually
becoming aware. Its products have not always been recognised, but of
late more interest is taken in this tributary to the great stream of
the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries.
The famous Peter or Pierre van Aelst, selected from all of Flanders'
able craftsmen to work for Raphael and the Pope, was born in this
little town, wove here and, more yet, was known as Pierre of Enghien.
Yet it is the larger town of Brussels which wore his laurels.
[Illustration: ENGHIEN]
The Enghien town marks are an easy adaptation of the arms of the
place, and the weavers' marks are generally monograms.
Weavers' marks, after playing about the eccentricities of cipher,
changed in the Seventeenth Century to easily read initials, sometimes
interlaced, sometimes apart. Later on it became the mode to weave the
entire name. An example of these is the two letters C of Charles de
Comans on the galloon of _Meleager and Atalanta_ (plate facing page
68); and the name G. V. D. Strecken in the _Antony and Cleopatra_
(plate facing page 79).
Other countries than Flanders were wise in their generation, and
placed the marks that are so welcome to the eye of the modern who
seeks to know all the secrets of the tapestry before him. In the
Seventeenth Century, when Paris was gathering her scattered decorative
force for later demonstration at the Gobelins, the city had a pretty
mark for its own, a simple fleur-de-lis and the initial P, and the
initials of the weaver.
[Illustration: PARIS]
[Illustration: ALEX. DE COMANS]
[Illustration: CHARLES DE COMANS]
That Jean Lefevre, who with his father Pierre was imported into Italy
to set the mode of able weaving for the Florentines, had a sign
unmistakable on the Gobelins tapestries of the _History of the King_.
(Plate facing page 114.) It was a simple monogram or union of his
initials. In the Eighteenth Century the Gobelins took the fleur-de-lis
of Paris, and its own initial letter G. The modern Gobelins' marks
combined the G with an implement of the craft, a _broche_ and a
straying thread.
[Illustration: JEAN LEFEVRE]
[Illustration: GOBELINS, 18TH CENTURY]
[Illustration: GOBELINS, MODERN]
In Italy, in the middle of the Sixteenth Century, we find the able
Flemings, Nicholas Karcher and John Rost, using their personal marks
after the manner of their country. Karcher thus signed his
marvellously executed grotesques of Bacchiacca which hang in the
gallery of tapestries in Florence. (Plates facing pages 48 and 49.)
John Rost's fancy led him to pun upon his name by illustrating a fowl
roasting on the spit. Karcher had a little different mark in the
Ferrara looms, where he went at the call of the d'Este Duke.
[Illustration: KARCHER, FLORENCE]
[Illustration: JOHN ROST]
[Illustration: KARCHER, FERRARA]
The Florence factory made a mark of its own, refreshingly simple,
avoiding all of the cabalistic intricacies that are so often made
meaningless by the passing of the years, and which were affected by
the early Brussels weavers. The mark found on Florence tapestries is
the famous Florentine lily, and the initial of the town. The mark of
Pierre Lefevre, when weaving here, was a combination of letters.
[Illustration: PIERRE LEFEVRE, FLORENCE]
[Illustration: MORTLAKE]
When the Mortlake factory was established in England, the date was
sufficiently late, 1619, for marking to be considered a necessity. The
factory mark was a simple shield quartered by means of a cross thrown
thereon. Sir Francis Crane contented himself with a simple F. C., one
a-top the other, as his identification. Philip de Maecht, he whose
family went from Holland to England as tapissiers, directed at
Mortlake the weaving of a part of the celebrated _Vulcan_ and _Venus_
series, and his monogram can be seen on _The Expulsion of Vulcan from
Olympus_ (coloured plate facing page 170), owned by Mrs. A. von
Zedlitz, as well as in the other rare _Vulcan_ pieces owned by Philip
Hiss, Esq. This same Philip de Maecht worked under De Comans in Paris,
he having been decoyed thence by the wise organisers of Mortlake.
[Illustration: SIR FRANCIS CRANE]
[Illustration: PHILIP DE MAECHT]
The marks on tapestries are as numerous as the marks on china or
silver, and the absence of marks confronts the hunter of signs with
baffling blankness, as is the case of many very old wares, whether
china, silver or tapestries. Also, late work of poor quality is
unmarked. Having thus disposed of the situation, it remains to
identify the marks when they exist. The exhaustive works of the French
writers must be consulted for this pleasure. There are hundreds of
known signs, but there exist also many unidentified signs, yet the
presence of a sign of any kind is a keen joy to the owner of a hanging
which displays it.
[Illustration: TOURNAY]
[Illustration: LILLE]