compositions, and the flowers, &c., as in the ground of Fig. 18,
and might complete or correct their cartoons with charcoal or
thalk, but for every other style of work they were bound to apply
to professional painters under pain of fine.[1]
In 1528 the Brussels tapissiers and dealers in tapestries were
required to mark their weavings, and Charles V. ordered all tapestry
makers in the Low Countries to do the same.[2] This
practice was followed in other countries into which
Tapestry makers’ marks.
emigrant Flemish or French weavers had carried the
industry, making their tapestries very often from
copies they took with them of cartoons designed by
noted Italian and Flemish painters. Makers’ marks have in so
many cases been cut from tapestries that it becomes practically
impossible to identify the places where they were made, and the
dates of their production can only be conjectured from the styles
of designs, supplied for instance by such artists or their
followers) as the Van Eycks, Roger van der Weyden,
Artists who designed cartoons
for tapestry.
Mantegna, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Bernard van
Orley, Lancelot Blondeel and John van der Straaten or
Stradanus; this last-named was for many years employed
in connexion with the important “Arrazeria
Medici” founded in Florence by Cosmo I., duke of Tuscany
(1537), which lasted until the beginning of the 18th century; Stradanus’s
style of design is similar to that of episodes in the story of Dido
and Aeneas shown in fig. 23 from an Oudenarde tapestry of the
early 17th century. Reverting to the 16th century, reference
must be made to Cardinal Wolsey and Henry VIII., who possessed
enormous quantities of the best Flemish tapestries of their time and
earlier, and a fair number of them are still preserved at Hampton
Court Palace.[3] The king had in his service not only agents especially
in Brussels to buy hangings, but also a considerable staff of “Arrasmakers.”
In Ireland, the taste for tapestry was evidenced by a
manufactory at Kilkenny of “tapestry, Turkey carpets and
diapers,” founded early in the 16th century at the instance of Piers,
8th earl of Ormond and his lady, Margaret FitzGerald, and giving
employment to workmen introduced by him from Flanders.[4] At
a rather later date tapestry works were established by William
Sheldon at Weston and Barcheston in Warwickshire, with a view
to which he previously sent Richard Hickes to the Low Countries
to learn tapestry-weaving. A few Flemings were probably brought
over by him and set to work at Barcheston and Weston, where he
was appointed “master weaver.” In his will (1569) Sheldon calls
Hickes, somewhat erroneously perhaps, “the only auter and beginner
of tapestry and Arras within this realm.” His son, Francis
Hickes, was educated at St Mary Hall, Oxford (1579–83). and
about 1640 he caused some tapestry maps to be woven.[5] Made
before them are a set of hangings of the “Four Seasons, ” now
preserved at Hatfield. These are most probably from designs by
Francis Hickes. They were bought by the marquis of Salisbury
very shortly before the first visit of Queen Victoria to Hatfield.
The borders of these pieces with small medallions and Latin mottoes
are attractively amusing and interesting. In the lower border
(fig. 24) one may read “via. virtuti. encyclopedia”; in the
upper border a date, “1611,” occurs in one medallion. In the
upper border of each hanging is an important coat of arms with
several quartering’s, chief of which are those of Tracey of Toddington
in Gloucestershire impaling those of Shirley of Wiston in Sussex.
The designer’s inventiveness and fancy in illustrating attributes, &c.,
of the “Seasons” are almost exuberant, however restricted and
quaint his graphic power seems to be.
Philip II. is mentioned as having encouraged a manufacture of tapestry by Flemings in Madrid in 1582. In 1539, Francis I. started a royal factory for tapestry at Fontainebleau (see fig. 20), and employed Primaticcio amongst other artists to furnish the necessary designs. Henry II., whilst continuing work at Fontainebleau, caused a second factory to be set going in Paris at the Hépital de la Trinité. Henry IV. continued this royal patronage in lavish fashion and added yet another factory, that in the Faubourg St. Antoine, which in 1603 was transferred to workrooms in the Louvre. As Paris thus came to the fore, so Brussels gradually declined. Upon the death of Henry IV. in 1610 Paris tapestry-making suffered a check, which may perhaps have contributed somewhat favourably to the start made by James I. to organize the Mortlake works, where several foreign workmen were employed under the direction of Sir Francis Crane.[6] Both James I. and Charles I. supplied considerable sums of money for the Mortlake works, and tapestries were made there, as fine as any contemporaneously at Paris or Brussels, e.g. those from Raphael’s cartoons of “the Acts of the Apostles,”[7] Rubens’s “Story of Achilles,” and portraits by Van Dyck. After the execution of Charles I., Mortlake declined, and new life was infused into the industry at Paris under the influence of Colbert, to whose strong personal interest in the arts is due the organization in 1667 of the Hôtel des Gobelins under the painter Charles le Brun as the Manufacture Royale des Meubles de la Couronne, which for large hangings became the premier tapestry-weaving centre in Europe. Three years previously Colbert had initiated a similar manufactory, chiefly with low-warp frames, at Beauvais, which is noted for sofa and chair seats and backs, screens and small panels.
Efforts to establish the industry in Rome were made during the 17th century, but it is only since the pontificate of Clement XI. in 1702 that a papal factory has been successfully conducted and is still carried on in the Vatican. The manufactory of Santa Barbara in Madrid was founded by Philip V. in 1720, and although it was closed in 1808 it re-opened in 1815 and is still at work.
Tapestry-weaving during the 18th century under private enterprise was pursued with success and still continues at Aubusson, Felletm; it was carried on for a short time only at Fulham, Soho, Exeter, and for rather longer periods at 18th and 19th century tapestry-weaving. Lille, Cambrai, Gisors, Nancy, Naples, Turin, Venice, Seville, Munich, Berlin, Dresden, Heidelberg and St Petersburg, maintaining, however, no very prolonged existence at any of these latter places. In more modern times English tapestries woven after 1878 at the Merton works from designs by William Morris (see fig. 26), as well as by Sir Edward Burne-Jones[8] and Mr Walter Crane, have great distinction in vigorous style reminiscent of virile medieval work. In mere technique of weaving with fine warp and weft they are outdone by the comparatively effeminate and delicate painting like fabrics now made at the Gobelins and Aubusson.
Towards the end of the 17th century as well as early in the 18th century some tapestry-weaving was carried on in Ireland. For about twenty years at Chapelizod, near Dublin, tapestry frames were worked by Christopher and John Lovett, the latter of whom had to leave Dublin, bringing with him into England some thirty eight (pieces of tapestry of “Their Majesties’ Manufacture of Ireland.” In the Bank of Ireland, in College Green, Dublin, are two large hangings which were executed by Robert Baillie, " who is said to have held the appointment of upholsterer to the Irish government in 1716.[9] One of them represents the Battle of the Boyne, the other the “ Glorious Defence of Londonderry” (see fig. 25). Lough Foyle and the hill surmounted by the city of Londonderry are represented in the landscape: to the left in the foreground is James II., by whom is the Commander Hamilton with his hat off, and near at hand cavalry: on the right are mortars, cannon and foot soldiers. The border of this tapestry is fantastic in design and rather in the style of an over-elaborated theatre proscenium, upon which hang medallions containing portraits of Captain Baker, the Rev. Dr Walker and the captain of the frigate “ Dartmouth, ” in which the supplies were brought to the besieged which led to the relief of the city and the defeat of the investing army. The designs for these Dublin tapestries are credited to John Vanbeaver, a Flemish weaver, who seems to have been a moderate draughtsman. They are clearly adaptations of designs of historical events, by Le Brun and van der Meulen, from which tapestries were woven at the Gobelins factory to the order of Louis XIV. at the end of the 17th century. These Dublin hangings were woven about 1735, and Baillie was commissioned to make four others representing the landing of the prince of Orange, his army at Carrickfergus, the Battle of Aughrim, and the taking of Cork and Kinsale by Marlborough.[10] These, however, were not completed, and Baillie was paid £200 as compensation.
Tapestry-weaving as a possible cottage or home industry is practised in a few places in Ireland and England. In the Far East, China and Japan, the art, adopted presumably from western Asia, is sometimes resorted to in making silken robes and intricately figured hangings. The Japanese call their tapestry-weaving tsu-zu-re-ori.
- ↑ Bulletin des commissions royales d’art et d’archéologie. Wauters, Les tapissiers de haute et basse lisse à Bruxelles.
- ↑ See list of tapestry marks, pp. 472–81 in Thomson’s History of Tapestry.
- ↑ See Law’s Hampton Court Palace, 1885.
- ↑ See Transactions of the Kilkenny Archaeological Society, 1852, “Ancient Tapestry at Kilkenny Castle,” by the Rev. James Graves.
- ↑ See “Tapestry Maps in the Museum at York” (paper read before Royal Geographical Society by Rev. W. K. R. Bedford, printed 10th Dec. 1896, and included in vol. i. of the society’s Transactions for 1897), also in Bodleian Library.
- ↑ A half-length portrait by Van Dyck of Sir Francis Crane worked in tapestry, and one or two small fine-warp tapestry panels of the Virgin Mary and Jesus Christ, hang at Lord Petre’s, Thorndon Hall, Brentwood. Ancestors of the late Lady Petre were related to the Crane family, as well as to the Markham family with which Edward Sheldon by his marriage early in the 17th century became connected. The Sheldon and Markham arms occur in the border of one of the map tapestries in the Bodleian Library.
- ↑ The original cartoons, the property of the Crown, are exhibited in the Victoria and Albert Museum.
- ↑ A very fine set of Merton tapestries made from Burne-Jones’s designs are in the Municipal Museum at Birmingham.
- ↑ References to his employment in making tapestries occur in the Journal of the Irish House of Lords.
- ↑ See Gilbert’s History of Dublin, vol. iii. p. 79.
