Though regarding actual time so very old, still in comparison with
weaving and embroidery, the art of tapestry is, it would seem, the
youngest of the three.
It is neither real weaving, nor true embroidery, but 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 kind of 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 are
sure the art must be very old; but if it did not take its first rise
in Egypt, we are led by the same authority to conclude that it soon
became much and successfully cultivated by the people of that land.
The woman in Proverbs vii. 16, says:--“I have woven my bed with cords.
I have covered it with painted tapestry, brought from Egypt.” While,
therefore, in those words we hear how it used to be employed as an
article of household furniture among the Israelites, by them are we
also told that the Egyptians were the makers.
Like weaving and fine needlework, the art of tapestry came from Egypt
and Asia, westward; and in the days of Virgil our old British sires
were employed in the theatres at Rome as scene-shifters, where they had
to take away those tapestries on which they themselves, as examples of
imperial triumph, had been figured:--
Juvat ...
Vel scena ut versis discedat frontibus, utque
Purpurea intexti tollant aulæa Britanni.[352]
From Egypt through Western Asia the art of tapestry-making found its
way to Europe, and at last to us; and among the other manual labours
followed by their rule in religious houses, this handicraft was one,
and the monks became some of its best workmen. The altars and the walls
of their churches were hung with such an ornamentation. Matthew Paris
tells us, that among other ornaments which, in the reign of Henry I,
Abbot Geoffrey had made for his church of St. Alban’s monastery, were
three reredoses, the first a large one wrought with the finding of
England’s protomartyr’s body; the other two smaller-ones figured with
the gospel story of the man who fell among thieves, the other with that
of the prodigal son: “dedit quoque dossale magnum in quo intexitur
inventio Sancti Albani, cujus campus est aerius, et aliud minus ubi
effigiatur Evangelium de sauciato qui incidit in latrones, et tertium
ubi historia de filio prodigo figuratur.”[353] While in London, A.D.
1316, Simon Abbot, of Ramsey, bought for his monks’ use 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.”[354]
What was done in one monastery was but the reflex of every other;
hence, Giffard, one of the commissioners for the suppression of the
smaller houses, in the reign of Henry VIII., thus writes to Cromwell,
while 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, &c.”[355]
[352] Georg. L. iii. 24, &c.
[353] Vitæ S. Albani Abbatum, p. 40.
[354] Mon. Anglic. ii. p. 585.
[355] Collier, Ecclesiastical History of Great Britain, ed. Lathbury,
t. v. p. 3.
Pieces of English-made tapestry still remain. That fine, though
mutilated specimen at St. Mary’s Hall, Coventry, is one; a second is
the curious reredos for an altar, belonging to the London Vintners’
Company; it is figured with St. Martin on horseback cutting with his
sword his cloak in two, that he might give one-half to a beggar man;
and with St. Dunstan singing mass, and wrought by the monks of St.
Alban’s.
Though practised far and wide, the art of weaving tapestry became
most successfully followed in many parts of France and throughout
ancient Flanders where secular trade-gilds were formed for its especial
manufacture, in many of its towns. Several of these cities won for
themselves an especial fame; but so far, at last, did Arras outrun
them all that arras-work came, in the end, to be the common word, both
here and on the Continent, to mean all sorts of tapestry, whether
wrought in England or abroad. Thus is it, we think, that those fine
hangings for the choir of Canterbury Cathedral, now at Aix-en-Provence,
though made at home, perhaps too by his own monks, and given to that
church by Prior Goldston, A.D. 1595, are spoken of as, not indeed from
Arras, but arras-work--“pannos pulcherrimos opere de arysse subtiliter
intextos.”[356]
Arras is but one among several other terms by which, during the middle
ages, tapestry was called.
From the Saracens, it is likely Western Europe learned the art: at
all events its earliest name in Christendom was Saracenic work--“opus
Saracenicum”--and as our teachers, we too wrought in a low or
horizontal loom. The artizans of France and Flanders were the first
to bring forwards the upright or vertical frame, afterwards known
abroad as “de haute lisse,” in contradistinction to the low or
horizontal frame called “de basse lisse.” Those who went on with the
latter unimproved loom, though thorough good Christians, came to be
known, in the trade, as Saracens, for keeping to the method of their
paynim teachers; and their produce, Saracenic. In 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 Charlemaine: “Jean de Croisettes, tapissier Sarrazinois
demeurant à Arras, vend au Duc de Touraine un tapis Sarrazinois à or de
l’histoire de Charlemaine.”[357] Soon however the high frame put out
of use the low one; and among the many pieces of tapestry belonging
to Philippe Duke of Bourgogne and Brabant, very many are especially
entered as of the high frame, and one of them is thus described:--“ung
grant tapiz de haulte lice, sauz or, de l’istoire du duc Guillaume de
Normandie comment il conquist Engleterre.”[358]
[356] Anglia Sacra, t. i. p. 148.
[357] Voisin, p. 4.
[358] Les Ducs de Bourgogne, par le Comte de Laboure, t. ii. p. 270.
With the upright, as with the flat frame, the workman went the same
road to his labours; but, in either of these ways, had to grope in the
dark a great deal on 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 fixings or warp. As the face was downward in
the flat frame he had no means of looking at it to correct a fault. In
the upright frame he might go in front, and with his own doings 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 done, the pieces from
the upright frame were, in beauty and perfection, far beyond those that
had come from the flat one. In what that superiority consisted we do
not know with certitude, for not one single flat sample, truly such, is
recognizable from evidence within our reach.
To us it seems that the Saracenic work was in texture light and thin,
so that it might be, as it often was, employed for making vestments
themselves, or sewed instead of needlework embroidered on those
liturgical appliances. In the inventory of St. Paul’s, London, A.D.
1295, mention is made of it thus: “Duo amicti veteres quorum unus de
opere Saraceno.”[359] “Stola de opere Saraceno.”[360] “Vestimentum de
opere Saraceno.”[361] “Tunica et Dalmatica de indico sendato afforciato
cum bordura operis Saraceni.”[362] “Quatuor offertoria de rubeo serico
quorum duo habent extremitates de opere Saraceno.”[363]
[359] Dugdale, p. 319.
[360] Ib. p. 319.
[361] Ib. p. 320.
[362] Ib. p. 322.
[363] Ib. p. 324.
Of the tapestries in this collection, perhaps Nos. 1296, p. 296, and
1465, p. 298, may be of the so-called Saracenic kind, because wrought
in the low flat loom, or, “de basse lisse,” while all the rest are
assuredly of the “dehaute lisse,” or done in the upright frame.
When the illuminators of MSS. began--and it was mostly in
Flanders--to put in golden shadings all over their painting, their
fellow-countrymen, the tapestry-workers, did the same.
Such a manner, in consequence, cannot be relied on as any 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 here gold thread has been very plentifully used,
but the metal is of so debased a quality that it has become almost
black.
For Church decoration and household furniture the use of tapestry, both
here and abroad, was--nay, on the Continent still is--very great.
The many large pieces, mostly of a scriptural character, provided
by Cardinal Wolsey for his palace at Hampton Court, were very fine.
The most beautiful collection in the world--the Arazzi--now in the
Vatican at Rome, may be judged of by looking at a few of the original
cartoons at present in the Museum, drawn and coloured by Raffael’s own
hand. 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 Maundy Thursday.
England herself made like attempts--first at Mortlake, then years
afterwards in London, at Soho. Works from these two establishments
may be met with. At Northumberland House there is a room all hung
with large pieces of tapestry wrought at Soho, and for that place, in
the year 1758. The designs were done by Francesco Zuccherelli, and
consist of landscapes composed of hills crowned here and there with the
standing ruins of temples, or strewed with broken columns, among which
are wandering and amusing themselves groups of country folks. Mortlake
and Soho were failures. Not so the Gobelins at Paris, as may be
observed in the beautifully executed specimens in the Museum. As now,
so in ages gone by, pieces of tapestry were laid down for carpeting.
In many of our old-fashioned houses--in the country in particular--good
samples of Flemish tapestry may be found. Close to London, Holland
House is adorned with some curious specimens, especially in the raised
style.
Imitated tapestry--if paintings on canvas may be so called--existed
here hundreds of years ago under the name of “stayned cloth,” and the
workers of it were embodied into a London civic gild. Of this “stayned
cloth” we have lately found hangings upon the walls of a dining-room in
one mansion; in another ornamenting, with great effect, the top of a
stair-case.
At the beginning of the sixteenth century Exeter Cathedral had several
pieces of old painted or “stayned” cloth: “i pannus veteratus depictus
cum ymaginibus Sancti Andree in medio et Petri et Pauli ex lateribus;
i front stayned cum crucifixo, Maria et Johanne, Petro et Paulo; viij
parvi panni linei stayned, &c.”[364]
The very great use at that time of such articles in household furniture
may be witnessed in the will, A.D. 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.”[365]
[364] Ed. Oliver, p. 359.
[365] Testamenta Vetusta, ii. 453.
CARPETS
are somewhat akin to tapestry, and though the use of them may perhaps
be not so ancient, yet is very old. Here, again, to the people of
Asia, must we look for the finest as well as earliest examples of this
textile. Few are the mediæval specimens of it anywhere, and we are glad
to recommend attention to two pieces of that period fortunately in the
collection, No. 8649, p. 248, of the fourteenth century, and No. 8357,
p. 209, of the sixteenth, both of Spanish make.
As even the antechambers of our royal palaces, so the chancels in most
of our country parish churches used to be strewed with rushes. When,
however, they could afford it, the authorities of our cathedrals, even
in Anglo-Saxon times, sought to 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, A.D. 1420, besides two
large carpets, one bestowed by Bishop Nevill, A.D. 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, &c.”[366] In an earlier inventory, we find that among
the “bancaria,” or bench-coverings, in the choir of the same cathedral,
A.D. 1327, one was a large piece of English-made tapestry, with a
fretted pattern--“unum tapetum magnum Anglicanum frettatum.”[367] And
we think that as the Record Commission goes on under the Master of the
Rolls, to print our ancient historians, evidences will turn up showing
that the looms at work in all our great monasteries, among other webs,
wrought carpets. From existing printed testimony we know that, in
all likelihood, such must have been the practice at Croyland, where
Abbot Egelric, the second of the name bestowed before the year 992,
when he died, upon his church: “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: “Dedit etiam
duo magna pedalia leonibus intexta, ponenda ante magnum altare in
festis principalibus et duo breviora floribus respersa pro festis
Apostolorum.”[368] The quantity of carpeting in our palaces may be seen
by the way in which “my lady the queen’s rooms were strewed with them
‘when she took her chamber.’”[369]
[366] Ed. Oliver, p. 32.
[367] Ib. p. 317.
[368] Ingulphi Hist. ed. Savile, p. 505, b.
[369] Leland’s Collectanea, t. iv. pp. 179, 186, &c.