Needlework As Art Part 30

Darning or square netting.

Venice point.

Burano point.

Drawn lace.[377]

Embroidered linen.[378]

The price of these laces is very high, but not beyond their value when we consider the vast amount of skilled labour bestowed on them. We are often told that old lace is cheaper than new, as an absurd fact, because the antiquity of lace is supposed to add to its value. Yes, but princ.i.p.ally as an object of archaeological interest; whereas that which is being made now is supporting by its daily wage the needlewoman and her family, and perhaps providing for her old age; and as the strain on the eye is very heavy, many lace-workers early in life lose their sight, at least for all the purposes of their craft.[379] For these reasons we cannot say that the prices required for such luxurious tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs are unreasonable. Zanon da Udine gives us an idea of how costly they were in old times. He says that Giuseppe Berardi, a lace merchant in Venice, made a profit of 75,000 francs on a commission for a set of lace bed-hangings for the wedding of Joseph II., Emperor of Germany, which proves the high prices paid for the new laces of their day.

Blond laces, which take their turn occasionally as fashionable tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs, veils, and Spanish mantillas, are so called from their original Venetian name, "merletti biondi," pale laces. De Gheltof derives this appellation from the celebrated collar of Louis Quatorze, and fancies it was made of the fair hair of the workers; but this is only vague conjecture. The term was applied in the seventeenth century to laces in silk, gold, and silver--never to thread laces. I confess I do not find the reason for the name, but accept De Gheltof's information that it was given by the authority of the magistrates of Mercanzia in 1759.

This is but a very slight sketch of the history of lace. Venice being its birthplace, and likewise the busy scene of its rehabilitation, I have lingered over its school, and left but little s.p.a.ce for the discussion of those of Spain, Flanders, Belgium, and France. But these have been thoroughly investigated, and their individual merits are well appreciated, both as antique and modern dress decoration.

I have already said that the lace schools in France were inst.i.tuted by Colbert, who placed one at Auxerre, under the especial care of his brother, the bishop of that city. Louis Quatorze made it one of his splendid caprices, and not only set the example, but forced the fashion into this luxurious and extravagant channel.

In Spain, lace was made to look its best by being worn stretched over the great hoops of the "Guard-Infante;" and the fashion spread all over Europe. The white laces, resembling carved ivory or those in gold and silver, which remind one of solid jewellers' work, when spread over the surface of these fortified outworks, guarding from all approach the persons of the Infantas of Spain, a.s.sume in the portraits by Velasquez, a dignity which is in keeping with their value. The splendid designs show brilliantly on a background of scarlet, rose colour, or black silk; and that which, hanging loosely, looks only tawdry and ragged, had a magnificent effect when thus displayed.

For ecclesiastical purposes, these grand solid laces seem most appropriate, being effective in large s.p.a.ces, and easily seen at a distance, hanging over the edge of the altar, as a border to the linen cloths, or finishing the white alb of the officiating priest.

One cannot but agree with M. Blanc, who points out that each piece of lace had its intention, and that a fashionable ball-dress trimmed with the edging of an antique altar-cloth in loops, is in false taste, to say no worse of the misappropriation.

Though we have had no schools of lace in England (unless we can call our imitative industries schools), we have samplers of the time of Queen Elizabeth, and down to the middle of the last century, showing that drawn lace and cut lace were regularly taught, probably as an accomplishment, by Italians. The laces of Devonshire and the Isle of Wight (called Honiton) form a group totally distinct from those of Northamptonshire, Bedfordshire, and Oxfordshire, which last are very simple cushion bobbin-laces.

From the sixteenth century English ladies have, for their amus.e.m.e.nt, made cut laces. Still, we must confess we have no national style of lace, and the only enduring ones have been those of France and Belgium, which have always kept the lead since their establishment, though fluctuating in design with the varying fashions of each epoch.

Perhaps the reason of their longevity is that they have followed always the taste of their day. That of our time being decidedly archaeological, ancient patterns are now the most successful.

There is a kind of embroidery darned-work, called "Limerick lace,"

which is said to be only made in Ireland, and being partly machine-made, is not pure lace, and therefore little esteemed. Very fine thread laces have been produced at Irish work schools; but no commercial result has followed. Clever imitations of Venice point have come from Ireland lately, called "raised crochet." This is a novelty, and it is extremely fine and beautiful work.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Pl. 46.

Egyptian "Gobelins," Woven and Embroidered.]

The Exhibition of Irish Lace in London (June, 1883), shows how widespread have been the efforts of Irish ladies to employ the peculiar genius of the sister island for delicate work with the needle, which has always been shown in their beautiful embroideries on muslin and cambric. It appears that every kind of lace, except, perhaps, Brussels point, has been made in Ireland within the last 180 years; but as in each case the effort was always that of one individual woman, the school fell away when she died.

The names of these ladies are now worthily recorded in the official catalogue of the exhibition, with photographs of the specimens produced under their superintendence and care. Perhaps a permanent industry may crown, however late, their exertions to help the women of Ireland.

_Part 8._

TAPESTRY--OPUS PECTINEUM.

It is necessary to define precisely what is meant by the word "tapestry."[380] The term has been applied to all hangings, and so caused confusion between those that are embroidered with a design, on a plain or brocaded woven material, and those which are inwoven with the design from the first.[381] This latter was called in cla.s.sical language, "opus pectineum," because it was woven with the help of a comb (the "slay"),[382] to push the threads tight between each row of st.i.tches; and the individual st.i.tches were put in with a sort of a needle, or by the fingers only, and laid on the warp. It was thus practised by the Egyptians, by the Persians, Indians, and Peruvians; and in Egypt was often finished by embroidery. (Pl. 46.) In Egyptian tombs we have evidence of their tapestry, from the mural paintings representing men and women weaving pictures in upright looms. The comb which served to push the threads together after the st.i.tches were laid in is sometimes found in the weaver's tomb.

We have, in the British Museum, pieces of "opus pectineum" from Saccarah, in Egypt; and also fragments from a Peruvian tomb, of barbarous design, but the weaving is equal to the Egyptian; and both resemble the Gobelins weaving of to-day. Whence came the craft of the Peruvians?

Tapestry is woven in two ways, by a high or by a low-warp loom (_haute-lisse_ or _ba.s.se-lisse_), vertical or horizontal. The "slay"

is the implement which is peculiar to the craft. I shall not enter into any description of the mode of working the looms, as this has been thoroughly well done by masters of the art.[383] But I would call attention to the Frontispiece, copied from a Greek vase, where Penelope is portrayed sitting by her _haute-lisse_ frame. I also refer the reader to the ill.u.s.tration from the Rheims tapestries, in which a mediaeval artist shows the Blessed Virgin weaving at one that is horizontal or "ba.s.se-lisse." (Pl. 47.)

[Ill.u.s.tration: Pl. 47.

Portion of a Tapestry Hanging. Cathedral. Rheims. The Virgin weaves and embroiders at a _ba.s.se-lisse_ frame.]

For the best information I have been able to obtain regarding tapestry weaving, I must acknowledge my indebtedness to M. Albert Castel's "Bibliotheque des Merveilles."[384] He has given great care to the consideration of this subject, and has collected good evidences to prove his conclusions, which I willingly accept _en bloc_. Of course he has chiefly dealt with the French branch of the art, and with the Flemish, from which it immediately descends. He begins, however, by quoting Pliny, to prove the antiquity of weaving, and gives a verse of Martial's to this effect: "Thou owest this work to the land of Memphis, where the slay of the Nile has vanquished the needle of Babylon."[385]

Homer makes Helen weave the story of the siege of Troy; this may have been partly embroidered; and there are some pieces of woven tapestry introduced most ingeniously into the web of a linen shirt or garment, of which the sleeve is in the Egyptian department of the British Museum, proving that figures were pictured by weaving quite as early as the date of Troy, and unmistakably finished with the needle (Plate 18); at any rate, as early as the days of Homer. Arachne's web was interwoven with figures. She and Minerva rivalled each other in ingenious design and perfect execution. The description of the beautiful hangings they wove, the glorious colours with their tenderly graduated tints, and the graceful borders, appear to be almost prophetic of the highest efforts of the looms of the Gobelins.[386][387] Arachne's name is derived from the Hebrew word for weaving, "Arag."

It appears that the town now called Arras, but anciently Nomentic.u.m, was always a centre of the trade of the weavers;[388] for Flavius Vopiscus, writing in A.D. 282, says that thence came the Byrri--woven cloaks with hoods, which were much in vogue amongst all cla.s.ses in the later Roman Empire. The craft of weaving, which flourished in the Flemish and other adjacent countries, seems to have become native to that soil, and to have clung to it, surviving many historical cataclysms.[389]

Though in the fifth century the inhabitants of that country were transported wholesale to Germany by the Vandals, and among them those of the town of Arras, yet, thanks to the monasteries, there was a survival and a revival; the craftsmen grouping themselves round the religious houses. Specimens as models were brought from the East.

Aster, Bishop of Amasis (a town in Asiatic Turkey), describes these Oriental hangings in one of his homilies. He says that animals and scenes from the Bible were woven on white grounds.[390]

Sidonius Apollinaris, Bishop of Clermont Ferrand,[391] says that some foreign tapestries are "pictured" with the summits of Ctesiphon and Nephates, "wild beasts running rapidly across void canvas, and also by a miracle of art, the Parthian of wild aspect with his head turned backwards." This might be a description of a Chinese composition, and probably it is so.[392]

Woven tapestry is also called "Arras,"[393] because that town in the Netherlands was the home and school of the art of picture weaving in the Middle Ages. It has been hitherto excluded from the domain of needlework, because of the different use of the needle employed in it. It has always been woven on a loom, and is, in fact, embroidery combined with the weaving; for the shuttle, or slay, or comb completes each row of st.i.tches. It belongs as much to our art as does tambour work, which is done with a hook instead of a needle. Tapestry weaving is the intelligent craft of a practised hand guided by artistic skill.

The forms of the painted design must be copied by a person who can draw; and the colours require as much care in selection, as in painting with oils or water-colours. Such a thing as a purely mechanical exact copy is impossible in any art; and the difficulties are increased a hundredfold when it is a translation into another material, and another form of art. Besides, in this case, the copies are worked from the back, and the picture is reversed. The question is this: Can it be claimed as belonging to the same craft as embroidery?

I answer in the affirmative, and I claim it.

"When the Saracens began to weave tapestry we cannot tell; but the workers in woven pictures were called Sara.s.sins, and their craft, the 'opus Saracenic.u.m.'"[394] The French and Flemish artisans who continued to weave in the old upright frames (_haute-lisse_) were, whether Christians or not, called "Sara.s.sins." Probably they came through Spain, possibly from Sicily to Flanders and to France, or else from Byzantium. Viollet-le-Duc says that the "Saracinois" was a term applied to the makers of velvety carpets (_tapis veloutes_).[395] This is possible.[396] Woven carpets of Oriental type were spreading themselves as articles of luxury through Europe early in the Middle Ages; and the Persian style of design was much the same then, when the first models were brought to Spain, and thence to Arras, as it is now in the carpets we buy just woven in Persia.[397] The oldest specimens known here have been exhibited in the Indian Museum, and may be of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The perishable nature of the material makes us dependent on the sculptured records of all artistic design for our knowledge of carpets and hangings of more than a thousand years ago; and we must confess that we find nothing really resembling a Persian pattern in any cla.s.sical tomb or sculpture of the Dark Ages.[398]

I have allowed myself to touch upon carpet weaving, as it is germane to tapestry; though it is a branch that soon loses itself and leaves artistic work in the distance. Except the first design, it has become purely mechanical.

After what has been quoted from Ovid's "Metamorphoses," and bearing in mind the pictured webs described by Homer, and likewise the evidence of the frescoes in Egypt, and the woman weaving on the Greek fictile vase found at Chiusi, we may be justified in concluding that, like all other arts, that of tapestry existed in very early days, died out, and had to begin afresh, and gradually return to life, during the Middle Ages.

Bishop Gaudry, about 925, possessing a piece of tapestry with an inscription in Greek letters surrounded by lions "pa.r.s.eme," was much put about till he obtained something to match it, to hang on the opposite side of his choir at Auxerre.[399] And it is known that the monks of St. Florent, at Saumur, wove tapestries about 985, and continued to do so for two centuries. St. Angelme of Norway,[400]

Bishop of Auxerre, who died in 840, caused many tapestries to be executed for his church. At Poitiers this manufactory was so famous in the eleventh century, that foreign kings, princes, and prelates sought to obtain them, "even for Italy." The rules of their order of the monks of the Abbey of Cluny, dated 1009, were followed by those of St.

Wast and of the Abbey of Fleury, and others in France, who all wove wool and silk for tapestries. Le Pere Labbe, from whom much of this information is drawn and acknowledged by M. Charton (my authority), says that in 876, at Ponthievre, in presence of the Emperor Charles the Bold, the hall of the council-chamber was hung with pictured tapestries, and the seats were covered with them.[401]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Pl. 48.

Order of the Golden Fleece. Tapestry at Berne, taken from Charles the Bold at the Battle of Grandson, 1476.]

Sufficient has been said to show that during the dark ages hangings were woven in France, Germany, and Belgium,[402] and that England was not behind the rest of the civilized world in this craft. I think, also, that we have indicated its Oriental origin.[403]

Arras continued to lead as the great tapestry factory till the end of the fifteenth century, when the commercial failure of the city began, at the death of Charles le Temeraire, Duke of Burgundy.[404] Plate 48 shows a portion of his tent hangings woven with the order of the golden fleece taken at the battle of Grandson--now in the museum at Berne. Till then Arras had supplied most of the splendid decorations of which we find such marvellous lists. Every possible subject--religious, romantic, historical, and allegorical--was pressed into the service, and pictured hangings were supposed to instruct, amuse, and edify the beholders. The dark ages were illuminated, and their barbarity softened, by these constant appeals to men's highest instincts, and to the memories of their n.o.blest antecedents and aspirations, which clothed their walls, and so became a part of their daily lives. The great Flemish and French workshops became the ill.u.s.trators of the history of the world, as it was then read or being enacted. It is a record of faiths, religious and political; and of national and family lives and their changes. The Exhibition at Brussels in 1880 showed, by its "Catalogue Raisonne," how much could be extracted from its storied tapestries of both archaeological and artistic information.[405]

Though the art continued to be the servant of refined luxury in the fifteenth century, Arras itself had done its work,[406] and was superseded as the greatest weaver of artistic tapestry by a neighbour and rival. Brussels, which had been gradually a.s.serting itself as a weaving community, from that date absorbed most of the trade of Arras, and thence forwards, till Henri IV. established the works of the Savonnerie, Brussels led European taste, and employed the best artists. Brussels employed Leonardo da Vinci and Mantegna, Giovanni da Udine, Raphael, and later, Rubens and the great Dutch painters, to design cartoons for tapestry works. Raphael's pupil, Michael c.o.xsius, of Mechlin, superintended the copying of his master's cartoons.

Shortly afterwards, Antwerp, Oudenarde, Lille, Tournai, Valenciennes, Beauvais, Aubusson, and Bruges all had their schools;[407] and the adept can trace their differences and peculiarities, and name their birthplace, without referring to their trade-mark, or to that of the manufacturer, which is usually to be found in the outer border.

Poitiers, Troyes, Beauvais, Rheims, and St. Quentin likewise had their schools, and became famous.

Want of s.p.a.ce prevents my entering more fully into this subject of the northern tapestries, and I must refer my readers to the authorities I have quoted from so largely.

ITALIAN TAPESTRY.

The word Arrazzi shows us whence the Italians drew their art.

Doubtless there were looms in the Italian cities, and especially under ecclesiastical patronage, through the dark ages. Rome was in communication with the Atrebates in the third century, by whom she was supplied with the Byrri, or hooded cloaks then worn; and as it had been a centre for weaving commerce, it is probable that Rome received from Arras the craftsmen as well as the produce of their looms. At the Renaissance we find factories for pictured webs in Florence, Rome, Milan, Mantua, and elsewhere. The best artists of the Italian schools--Mantegna, Leonardo, Raphael and his scholars, &c., &c.--gave their finest designs to be executed in Italy, before they were sold to Arras, Brussels, France, or England, and they are acc.u.mulated in the treasure-room of every palace in Italy. But the finest collections are those of the Vatican, and of the Pitti in Florence. A splendid volume might be edited of these grand artistic works; such a record would be invaluable. Vasari[408] and Pa.s.sevant give us occasional glimpses of local factories for tapestry, but, as we have before said, this subject has still to be investigated.

FRENCH TAPESTRY.

In France, as elsewhere, tapestry was probably woven in private looms and in the religious houses from early days. M. Jubinal believes that it was made at Poitiers, Troyes, Beauvais, Rheims, and St. Quentin as early as 1025.[409] Froissart describes the entry of Isabel of Bavaria as a bride into Paris, when the houses were covered with hangings and tapestries representing historical scenes.[410] The Cluny Museum possesses a most curious mediaeval suite of hangings from the Chateau de Boussac, of the early part of the fifteenth century. They tell the story of the "Dame au Lion," and are brilliantly coloured and charmingly quaint and gay in design. Hangings designed by Primaticcio were woven at Fontainebleau, where Francis I. started the manufacture in 1539. However, the first national school of tapestry weaving was that at Chaillot, under the experienced teaching of workmen from Arras; afterwards transferred to the town of Gobelins, 1603, by Henri Quatre.[411] Louis Quatorze and his minister Colbert splendidly protected this manufacture by law, privilege, and employment; so did Louis Quinze. Before the Revolution, other considerable tapestry works were flourishing at Aubusson in Auvergne, at Felletin in the upper Marches, and at Beauvais. These two last were especially famed for velvety tapestries (_veloutes_).

As usual, the French have surpa.s.sed all other nations in this textile art. The pictorial tapestries of the Gobelins have carried the beauty of wall hangings to the utmost perfection. Nothing can be more festive than a brilliantly lighted hall, glowing with these woven pictures or arabesques, framed in gilded carvings or stuccoes. Still we must acknowledge that, in choice of worthy subjects, the Flemish ideal, which had been left far behind, was the highest. The weavers of the time of Louis Quatorze aspired only to teach the glories of France, not the moralities of society and civilization, in their historical compositions, which were then superseded by cla.s.sical mythology, or else by scenes from rustic life, of the Watteau School. La Fontaine's fables gave some of the prettiest and gayest designs, and were generally the centres of splendid arabesques. The drawing and execution were perfect.