From the way in which tapestry is spoken of in Holy Writ we may be sure that the art is very old; and if it did not take its first rise in Egypt, we are led by the same authority to conclude that it soon became successfully cultivated by the people of that land. The woman in the book of Proverbs says: “I have woven my bed with cords. I have covered it with painted tapestry, brought from Egypt.” We find, therefore, not only that it was employed as an article of household furniture among the Israelites, but that the Egyptians were the makers.
From Egypt through western Asia the art of tapestry-making found its way to Europe, and after many ages at last to England. Among the other manual labours followed in religious houses this handicraft was one; and monks became some of the best workmen. The altars and the walls of their churches were hung with tapestry. Matthew Paris tells us that among other ornaments96 which, in the reign of Henry the first, abbot Geoffrey had made for his church of St. Alban’s were three reredoses; the first a large one wrought with the finding of the body of St. Alban; the other two figured with the parables of the man who fell among thieves, and of the prodigal son. While in London in the year 1316 Simon abbot of Ramsey bought looms, staves, shuttles, and a slay: “pro weblomes emptis xxs. Et pro staves ad easdem vjd. Item pro iiij shittles pro eodem opere ijs vjd. Item in j. slay pro textoribus viijd.” Collier, in his history, quotes a letter from Giffard, one of the commissioners for the suppression of the smaller houses, written to Cromwell; in which he says, 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, etc.”
We may collect from Chaucer that working tapestry was not an uncommon trade; among his pilgrims he mentions in the prologue,
An haberdasher and a carpenter,
A webbe, a dyer, and a tapisser.
Pieces of English-made tapestry still remain. That fine though greatly damaged specimen at St. Mary’s hall, Coventry, representing the marriage of Henry the sixth, is one; a second is the curious reredos for an altar, belonging to the vintner’s company; this last is figured with St. Martin on horseback cutting his cloak in two that he might give one half to a poor man, and with St. Dunstan singing mass. A third piece, of large size and in good preservation, is in private possession, and hangs upon the wall in a house in Cornwall. It is one of four pieces, of which two have been lost, representing the marriage of Henry the seventh and Elizabeth of York; and was probably made about the year 1490.
The art of weaving tapestry was successfully followed in many parts of France and throughout ancient Flanders; where secular97 trade-guilds were formed for its especial manufacture in many of the towns. Several of these places won for themselves an especial fame; but so far, at last, did Arras outrun them all that arras-work came to be the common word, both here and on the continent, to mean all sorts of tapestry, whether wrought in England or abroad. Thus the fine hangings for the choir of Canterbury cathedral, now at Aix-en-Provence, though probably made at home by his own monks and given to that church by prior Goldston in 1595, are spoken of as arras-work: “de arysse subtiliter intextos.”
Banner of the tapestry workers of Lyons.
Arras is but one among other terms by which, during the middle ages, tapestry was called. Its earliest name was Saracenic work; “opus Saracenicum;” and, at first, tapestry was wrought as in the east, in a low or horizontal loom. The artisans of France and Flanders were the first to introduce the upright or vertical frame, afterwards known abroad as “de haute lisse,” in contradistinction to the low or horizontal frame called “de basse lisse.” Workmen who kept to the unimproved loom were known, in the trade, as Saracens, for retaining the method of their paynim teachers; and their work, Saracenic. In the year 1339 John de Croisettes, a Saracen-tapestry worker living at Arras, sells to the duke of98 Touraine a piece of gold Saracenic tapestry figured with the story of Charlemagne: “Jean de Croisettes, tapissier Sarrazinois demeurant à Arras, vend au duc de Touraine un tapis sarrazinois à or de l’histoire de Charlemaine.” The high frame, however, soon superseded the low one; and among the pieces of tapestry belonging to Philippe duke of Bourgogne and Brabant many are especially entered as of the high frame; one of which is thus described: “ung grant tapiz de haulte lice, sauz or, de l’istoire du duc Guillaume de Normandie comment il conquist Engleterre.” A very fine example is still to be seen in the collection at the Louvre, representing the history of St. Martin.
The legend of St. Martin.—From a piece of tapestry of the fourteenth century in the Louvre.
99 With the upright, as with the flat frame, the workman had to grope in the dark a great deal upon 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 strings or warp. As the face was downward in the flat frame it was much less easy to observe and correct a fault. In the upright frame he might go in front, and with his own work 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 finished, the pieces from the upright frame were in beauty and perfection far beyond those from the flat one. We can scarcely particularize the details in which that superiority consisted, for not one single flat sample is to be identified as certain from evidence within our reach. It is possible that at South Kensington the specimens nos. 1296 and 1465 are “Saracenic;” that is, wrought in the low flat loom, or “de basse lisse;” but all the rest are of the “de haute lisse,” worked in the upright frame. The “weaver” is among the trades engraved in the curious volume printed at Frankfort in 1574, de mechanicis artibus, with plates by Amman.
When the illuminators of manuscripts began to put in golden shadings all over their painting the tapestry-workers did the same. Such a manner cannot be relied on as a 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 at South Kensington gold thread has been very plentifully used, but the metal is of so debased a quality that it has become almost black.
The use of tapestry for church decoration and household furniture, both in England and abroad, was for a long period very great. Many large pieces, mostly of a scriptural character, were provided by cardinal Wolsey for his palace at Hampton court. In the next generation, a very famous set was made in100 Flanders, which for many years decorated the walls of the House of Lords: it represented the defeat of the Spanish Armada. This magnificent memorial was destroyed in the fire of 1834. One fragment only is known to exist. This piece was cut out to make way for a gallery at the time of the trial of queen Caroline, and was secreted by a German servant of the Lord Chamberlain. The relic was bought some years after for ￡20 and presented to the corporation of Plymouth, who still possess it.
The Weaver; from the engraving by J. Amman.
The most beautiful series now in the world is in the Vatican at Rome, and may be judged of by looking at a few of the original cartoons (at present in the S. K. museum). 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 Maunday Thursday. England101 made several attempts to re-introduce the manufacture: first at Mortlake, then afterwards in London, at Soho. Works from these two establishments may be met with. At Northumberland house there was a room hung with large pieces of tapestry wrought at Soho, and for that mansion, in the year 1758. The designs were by Francesco Zuccherelli and consisted of landscapes composed of hills crowned here and there with the standing ruins of temples or strewed with broken columns, among which groups of country folks are wandering and amusing themselves. Mortlake and Soho were failures. Not so the Gobelins at Paris, as every one well knows.
In many English houses, especially in the country, good samples of late Flemish tapestry may be found. Close to London, Holland house is adorned with some curious specimens, particularly in the raised style. An earlier example (engraved on the next page) of the fifteenth century, representing the marriage of Louis XII. and Anne of Brittany is in a foreign collection.
Imitated tapestry existed here long ago under the name of “stayned cloth,” and the workers of it were embodied into a London guild. At the beginning of the sixteenth century Exeter cathedral had several pieces of old painted or “stayned” cloth: “i front stayned cum crucifixo, Maria et Johanne, Petro et Paulo; viij panni linei stayned, etc.” The great use at that time of such articles in household furniture may be witnessed in the will, 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.” We may also remember that Falstaff speaks of it as an illustration easily understood; he says that his troops are “as ragged as Lazarus in the painted cloth.”
Carpets are akin to tapestry, and though the use of them may perhaps be not so ancient yet is very old. Here, again, we must look to the people of Asia for the finest as well as the earliest102 examples of this textile. Medi?val specimens are rare anywhere, and we are glad to recommend attention to two pieces of that period fortunately in the collection at South Kensington, no. 8649, of the fourteenth century, and no. 8357, of the sixteenth, both of Spanish make.
Marriage of Louis XII. and Anne of Brittany.
The chambers of our royal palaces and the chancels of our parish churches used to be strewed with rushes. When however they could afford it the authorities of our cathedrals, even in very103 early times, 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, in 1420; besides two large carpets, one bestowed by bishop Nevill in 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, etc.” In an earlier inventory we find that among the “bancaria” or bench-coverings in the choir of the same cathedral, one was a large piece of English-made tapestry with a fretted pattern. It is very probable that as the work of the Record Commission goes on, and our ancient historians are printed, evidence may be found that the looms at work in all our great monasteries among other webs wrought carpets. From existing testimony we believe that such must have been the practice at Croyland, where abbot Egelric (the second of the name) gave to that church, before the year 992, “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.” The quantity of carpeting in our palaces may be seen by the way in which Leland tells us that “my lady the queen’s rooms” were strewed with them “when she took her chamber.”