The Tapestry Book

The making of inspired tapestry does not belong to to-day. The _amour propre_ suffers a distinct pain in this acknowledgment. It were far more agreeable to foster the feeling th...

Whether Arras began as early as Paris is a question better left unsettled if only for the sake of furnishing a subject of happy controversy between the champions of the two opin...

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 i...

In following the great sweep of tapestry production we arrive now in France, there to stay until the Revolution. The early beginnings were there, briefly rivalling Arras, but Ar...

If the artists of tapestries had never drawn nor ever woven anything but the borders that frame them, we would have in that department alone sufficient matter for happy investig...

If the amateur can have the fortune to see in the same hour a tapestry of the early Fifteenth Century, and one a hundred years later, and then one about 1550, from Brussels, dra...

Identifying tapestries is like playing a game, like the solving of a piquant problem, like pursuing the elusive snark. I know of no keener pleasure than that of standing before...

The commercial fact that tapestries have immeasurably increased in value within the last five years, would have little interest were it not that this increase is the direct resu...

The wonderful time of the Burgundian dukes is gone; Charles le Temeraire leaves the world at Nancy, where the pitying have set up a cross in memory of his unkingly death, and wh...

Colbert saw the wisdom of taking direction for the king, Louis XIV, of the looms of Foucquet's chateau. Travel being difficult enough to make desirable the concentration of poin...

How felt the artists about this domesticating of their art? We are not told of the wry face they made when, with ideals in their souls, they were set to compose chair-seats for...

Egypt and China, India and Persia, seem made to take the conceit from upstart nations like those of Europe and our own toddling America. Directly we scratch the surface and look...

The three great epochs of tapestry weaving, with their three localities which are roughly classed as Arras in the Fifteenth Century, Brussels in the Sixteenth Century, and Paris...

Audran had in his studio Andre Watteau, whose very name spells sophisticated pastorals of exceeding loveliness. Watteau worked with Audran when he was producing his most inspire...

The history of tapestry in Italy is the story of the great families, their romances and achievements. These families were those which furnished rulers of provinces--kings, almos...

When the Raphael cartoons first came to Brussels the new method was a little difficult for the tapissier. His hand had been accustomed to another manner. He had, too, been allow...

Regardless of what a man's longing for fame may have been in the Middle Ages, he let his works pass into the world without a sign upon them that portrayed their author. This is...

Another name to conjure with, after Gobelins is Beauvais. In general it means to us squares of beautiful foliage,--foliage graceful, acceptably coloured, and of a pre-Raphaelite...

Colbert died most inopportunely in 1684 and was succeeded by his enemy, and for that matter, the enemy of France, the man of jealousy and cruelty, Louvois. He had long hated Col...

Brussels in 1515, with her workmen at the zenith of their perfection, was given the order to weave the set of the _Acts of the Apostles_ for the Pope to hang in the Sistine Chap...

So long as one word continues to have more than one meaning, civilised man will continue to gain false impressions. The word tapestry suffers as much as any other--witness the a...

In the Fourteenth Century, tapestry, the high-warp product, began to play an important part in the refinements of the day. We have seen the tendency of the past time to embellis...

Perhaps because of certain old and elegant carpets lying under-foot in the glow and shadows of old drawing-rooms that we love, the name of Aubusson is one of interesting meaning...

Those who hold by the letter, leave out the velvety product of La Savonnerie from the aristocratic society of hangings woven in the classic stitch of the Gobelins. They have rea...