The Tapestry Book Part 19

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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PARIS]

[Ill.u.s.tration: ALEX. DE COMANS]

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: JEAN LEFeVRE]

[Ill.u.s.tration: GOBELINS, 18TH CENTURY]

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 ill.u.s.trating 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: KARCHER, FLORENCE]

[Ill.u.s.tration: JOHN ROST]

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 pa.s.sing 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PIERRE LEFeVRE, FLORENCE]

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 tap.i.s.siers, 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SIR FRANCIS CRANE]

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: TOURNAY]

[Ill.u.s.tration: LILLE]

CHAPTER XXII

HOW IT IS MADE

Wanting to see the wheels go 'round is a desire not limited to babes.

We, with our minds stocked with the history and romance of tapestry, yet want to know just how it is made in every particular, just how the loom works, how the threads are placed.

It seems that there must be some obscure and occult secret hidden within the looms that work such magic, and we want to pluck it out, lay it in the sunlight and dissect its intricacies. Well, then, let us enter a tapestry factory and see what is there. But it is safe to forecast the final deduction--which must ever be that the G.o.d of patience is here omnipotent. Talent there must be, but even that is without avail if patience lacks.

The factory for tapestries seems, then, little like a factory. The belt and wheel, the throb and haste are not there. The whole place seems like a quiet school, where tasks are done in silence broken by an occasional voice or two. It is a place where every one seems bent on accomplishing a brave amount of fancy-work; a kindergarten, if you like, for grown-ups.

Within are many departments of labour. The looms are the thing, of course, so must be considered first, although much preparing is done before their work can be begun.

The looms are cla.s.sic in their method, in their simplicity. They have scarcely changed since the days when Solomon built his Temple and draped it with such gorgeous hangings that even the inspired writers digress to emphasise their richness with long descriptions that could not possibly have a.s.sisted the cause of their religion.

The st.i.tch made by the modern loom is the same as that made by the looms of the furthermost-back Egyptian, by the Greeks, by the Chinese, of primitive peoples everywhere, by the people of the East in the familiar Khelim rugs, and by the aborigines of the two Americas. There is nothing new, nothing obscure about it, being a simple weaving of warp and woof. Penelope's loom was the same almost as that in use to-day at the Gobelins factory in Paris. Archeologists have discovered pictures of the ancient Egyptian loom, and of Penelope's, and there is but little change from the times of these ladies to our days.

The fact is, the work is hand-work, must always be so, and the loom is but a tool for its working, a tool which keeps in place the threads set by hand. That is why tapestry must always be valuable and original and no more possible to copy by machine than is a painting.

High warp and low warp are the terms so often used as to seem a shibboleth. _Haute lisse_ and _ba.s.se lisse_ are their French equivalents. They describe the two kinds of looms, the former signifying the loom which stands upright, or high; the latter indicating the loom which is extended horizontally or low. On the high loom, the instrument which holds the thread is called the _broche_, and on the low loom it is called the _flute_.

The st.i.tch produced by the two is the same. The manner of producing it varies in convenience to the operators, the low-warp being the easier, or at least the more convenient and therefore the quicker method.

The cynic is ever ready to say that the tyrant living within a man declares only for those things which represent great sacrifice of time and effort on the part of other men. Perhaps it is true, and that therein lies the preference of the connoisseur in tapestry for the works of the high-warp loom. Even the wisest experts cannot always tell by an examination of a fabric, on which sort of loom it was woven, high warp or low, other evidence being excluded.

The high loom has, then, the threads of its warp hung like a weighted veil, from the top of the loom to the floor, with a huge wooden roller to receive the finished fabric at the bottom and one at the top for the yet unneeded threads. Each thread of the warp is caught by a loop, which in turn is fastened to a movable bar, and by means of this the worker is able to advance or withdraw the alternate threads for the casting of the _broche_ or _flute_, which is the shuttle. Behind the veil of the warp sits the weaver--_tissier_ or _tap.i.s.sier_--with his supply of coloured thread; back of him is the cartoon he is copying.

He can only see his work by means of a little mirror the other side of his warp, which reflects it. The only indulgence that convenience accords him is a tracing on the white threads of the warp, a copy of the picture he is weaving. Thus stands the prisoner of art, sentenced to hard labour, but with the heart-swelling joy of creating, to lighten his task.

[Ill.u.s.tration: WEAVER AT WORK ON LOW LOOM. HERTER STUDIO]

[Ill.u.s.tration: SEWING AND REPAIR DEPARTMENT. BAUMGARTEN ATELIERS]

High-warp looms were those that made famous the tapestries of Arras in the Fifteenth Century, of Brussels in the Sixteenth, and of Paris in the Seventeenth, therefore it is not strange that they are worshipped as having a resident, mysterious power.

To-day, the age of practicality, they scarcely exist outside the old Gobelins in Paris. But this is not the day of tapestry weaving.

A shuttle, thrown by machine, goes all the width of the fabric, back and forth. The _flute_ or _broche_, which is the shuttle of the tapestry weaver, flies only as far as it is desired to thrust it, to finish the figure on which its especial colour is required. Thus, a leaf, a detail of any small sort, may mount higher and higher on the warp, to its completion, before other adjacent parts are attempted.

The effect of this is to leave open slits, petty gashes in the fabric, running lengthwise of the warp, and these are all united later with the needle, in the hands of the women who thus finish the pieces.

Unused colours wound on the hundreds of flutes are dropped at the demand of the pattern, left in a rich confusion of shades to be resumed by the workmen at will; but the threads are not severed, if the colour is to be used again soon.