Section III.—Tapestry.

Thoughregarding 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, utquePurpurea intexti tollant aulæa Britanni.[352]

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 xxs. Et pro staves ad easdem vjd. Item pro iiij shittles pro eodem opere ijsvjd. Item in j. slay pro textoribus viijd.”[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 swordhis 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, and1465, 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.

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, andNo. 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.

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