The Tapestry Book Part 23

[Ill.u.s.tration: TRUTH BLINDFOLDED

Merton Abbey Tapestry. Byram Shaw, Artist]

The most enchantingly mediaeval and most modernly perfect piece is by Burne-Jones, called _David Instructing Solomon in the Building of the Temple_. (Plate facing page 257.) In this the time of Gothic beauty lives again. Planes are repeated, figures are ma.s.sed, detail is clear and impressive, yet modern laws of drawing concentrate the interest on the central action as strongly as though all else were subservient.

_The Pa.s.sing of Venus_ was Burne-Jones' last cartoon for Merton Abbey looms. (Plate facing page 260.) Although a critique of the art of this great painter would be out of place in a book on the applied arts, at least it is allowable to express the conviction that more beautiful, more fitting designs for tapestry it would be difficult to imagine.

Modern work of this sort has produced nothing that approaches them, preserving as they do the sincerity and reverence of a simple people, the ideality of a conscientious age, yet softening all technical faults with modern finish. An unhappy fact is that this tapestry, which was considered by the Merton Abbey works as its _chef d'oeuvre_, was destroyed by fire in the Brussels Exhibition of 1910.

Alas for tapestry weaving of to-day, the usual modern cartoon is a staring anachronism, and a conglomerate of modes. An "art nouveau"

lady poses in a Gothic setting, a Thayer angel stands in a Boucher entourage, and both eye and intelligence are revolted. The master craftsman and artist, William Morris, alone has known how to produce acceptable modern work from modern cartoons. Other examples are _Angeli Laudantes_, and _The Adoration_. (Plates facing pages 261 and 256.)

A false note is sometimes struck, even in this factory of wondrous taste. In _Truth Blindfolded_ (plate facing page 258), Mr. Byram Shaw has drawn the central figure as Cabanel might have done a decade ago, while every other figure in the group might have been done by some hand dead these four hundred years.

Morris' manner of procedure differed little from that of the decorator Lebrun, although his work was a private enterprise and in no way to be compared with the royal factory of a rich king. Burne-Jones drew the figures; H. Dearle, a pupil, and Philip Webb drew backgrounds and animals, but Morris held in his own hands the arrangement of all. It was as though a gardener brought in a sheaf of cut roses and the master hand arranged them. Mr. Dearle directed some compositions with skill and talent.

With the pa.s.sing of William Morris an inevitable change is visible in the cartoons. The Gothic note is not continued, nor the atmosphere of sanct.i.ty, which is its usual accompaniment. A tapestry of 1908 from the design of _The Chace_ by Heyward Sumner suggests long hours with the Flemish landscapists of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, with a jarring note of Pan dragged in by the ears to huddle under foliage obviously introduced for this purpose.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE Pa.s.sING OF VENUS

Merton Abbey Tapestry. Cartoon by Burne-Jones]

[Ill.u.s.tration: ANGELI LAUDANTES

Merton Abbey Tapestry]

But criticism of this aberration cannot hurt the wondrous inspired work directed by Morris, and which it were well for a beauty-loving world to have often repeated. Unhappily, the Merton Abbey works are bound not to repeat the superb series of the _Grail_. The entire set has been woven twice, and three pieces of it a third time--and there it ends. This is well for the value of the tapestries, but is it not a providence too thrifty when the public is considered? In ages to come, perhaps, other looms will repeat, and our times will glow with the fame thereof.

Before leaving the subject of the Merton Abbey tapestries, it is interesting to note a technical change in the weaving. By intertwisting the threads of the chain or warp at the back, a way is found to avoid the slits in weaving that are left to be sewn together with the needle in all old work. This method has been proved the stronger of the two. The strain of hanging proves too great for the strength of the st.i.tches, and on many a tapestry appear gaping wounds which call for yet more st.i.tching. But in the new method the fabric leaves the loom intact.

The determination of William Morris to catch old secrets by fitting his feet into old footsteps, led him to employ only the loom of the best weavers in the ancient long ago. The high-warp loom is the only one in use at the Merton Abbey works.

AMERICA

America makes heavy demands for tapestries, but the art of producing them is not indigenous here. We are not without looms, however. The first piece of tapestry woven in America--to please the ethnologist we will grant that it was woven by Zuni or Toltec or other aborigine.

But the fabric approaching that of Arras or Gobelins, was woven in New York, in 1893, in the looms of the late William Baumgarten. It is preserved as a curiosity, as being the first. It is a chair seat woven after the designs popular with Louis XV and his court, a plain background of solid colour on which is thrown a floral ornament.

The loom was a small affair of the low-warp type, and was operated by a Frenchman who came to this country for the purpose of starting the craft on new soil.

The sequence to this small beginning was the establishment of tapestry ateliers at Williamsbridge, a suburb of New York. Like the Gobelins factory, this was located in an old building on the banks of a little stream, the Bronx. Workmen were imported, some from Aubusson, who knew the craft; these took apprentices, as of old, and trained them for the work. The looms were all of the low-warp pattern.

It may be of interest to those who like figures, to know that the work of the Baumgarten atelier averages in price about sixty dollars a square yard. Perhaps this will help a little in deciding whether or not the price is reasonable when a dealer seductively spreads his ancient wares. Modern cartoons of the Baumgarten factory lack the charm of the old designs, but the adaptations and copies of ancient pieces are particularly happy. No better execution could be wished for. The factory has increased its looms to the number of twenty-two, and has its regular corps of tap.i.s.siers, dyers, repairers, etc.

Nowhere is the life of the weaver so nearly like that of his prototype in the golden age of tapestry. The colony on the Bronx is like a bit of old Europe set intact on American soil.

[Ill.u.s.tration: AMERICAN (BAUMGARTEN) TAPESTRY COPIED FROM THE GOTHIC]

[Ill.u.s.tration: DRYADS AND FAUNS

From Herter Looms, New York, 1910]

It is odd that New York should have more tapestry looms at work than has Paris. The Baumgarten looms exceed in number the present Gobelins, and the Herter looms add many more. The ateliers of Albert Herter are in the busiest part of New York, and here are woven by hand many fabrics of varying degrees of excellence. It is not Mr. Herter's intention to produce only fine wall hangings, but to supply as well floor coverings "a la facon de Perse," as the ancient doc.u.ments had it, and to make it possible for persons of taste, but not necessarily fortune, to have hand-woven portieres of artistic value.

Apart from this commendable aim, the Herter looms are also given to making copies of the antique in the finest of weaving, and to producing certain original pieces expressing the decorative spirit of our day. Besides this, the work is distinguished by certain combinations of antique and modern style that confuse the seeker after purity of style. That the effect is pleasing must be acknowledged as ill.u.s.trated in the plate showing a tapestry for the country house of Mrs. E. H. Harriman. (Plate facing page 263.) It is not easy in a review of tapestry weaving of to-day to find any great encouragement.

These are times of commerce more than of art. If art can be made profitable commercially, well and good. If not, it starves in a garret along with the artist. If the demand for modern tapestries was large enough, the art would flourish--perhaps. But it is not a large demand, for many reasons, chief among which is the incontrovertible one that the modern work is seldom pleasing. The whole world is occupied with science and commerce, and art does not create under their influence as in more ideal times. What can the trained eye and the cultivated taste do other than turn back to the products of other days?

We have artists in our own country whose qualities would make of them marvellous composers of cartoons. The imagination and execution of Maxfield Parrish, for example, added to his richness of colouring, would be translatable in wool under the hands of an artist-weaver. And the designs which take the name of "poster" and are characterised by strength, simplicity and few tones, why would they not give the same crispness of detail that const.i.tutes one of the charms of Gothic work?

Perhaps the factories existent in America will work out this line of thought, combine it with honesty of material and labour, and give us the honour of prominence in an ancient art's revival.

FINISH