Embroidery.
The earliest method of decorating textiles was that of embroidering. It has been called “painting with the needle,” and is even an older art than pattern weaving. In some of the oldest monuments of art that are still in existence, as the bas-reliefs of Egypt and Assyria, there may be seen representations of the embroidery that formerly decorated the kings’ garments (see Figs. 162A to 165, former volume), and we have seen that these were the models for some of the earliest woven patterns. At first embroidered patterns would be simple geometrical designs, and afterwards symbolic units mixed with simple floral forms, as many of the older Egyptian embroidered patterns usually were, until by degrees the higher forms of patterns with figures or personages and animal forms were developed by the Chaldeans and Assyrians.
The latter nations, with their inherent love of barbaric splendour and Asiatic predilections for georgeous[georgeous] colouring, surpassed the Egyptians in the art of embroidery.
The Persians and surrounding nations inherited from the older races this love of colour and early traditions of design, which are still seen in their tapestry, carpets, and embroidered work of all kinds.
The ancient Phrygian and Lydian people, who inhabited a portion of Asia Minor, were cultured races whom the Greeks and Romans always regarded as the inventors of embroidery—"phrygio" being the Roman word for embroiderer. The Phrygian embroidered patterns were mostly geometric, but in the later periods plant and animal forms were also used. Most of the decoration of the Ionian Greek pottery, consisting of bands of animals, birds, rosettes, and lozenges, are copies from the embroidered work of Asia Minor. To-day, even, the women of these parts embroider their bodices, aprons, head-coverings, and towels in an almost similar style of ornament.
The rock-cut façades of the Phrygian tombs, unlike the imitated timber constructions of the Lydian tombs, have sculptured decorations that have been copied from geometrical forms of embroidery, and in many cases these façades resemble an embroidered curtain or carpet that would be hung up to serve the purposes of a door to the entrance of the earlier square domestic wooden buildings, of which the Phrygian and Lydian tombs were imitations in stone.
The Assyrian thresholds (Fig. 166, former volume) and many other sculptures and wall decorations in painted tiles of Chaldean and Persian origin were usually copies of embroidery, all of which clearly shows that embroidery and pattern weaving preceded stone, wood, and metal sculpture.
The Greeks were highly skilled in making embroidery. Homer repeatedly alludes to this art as an employment for women. Helen of Troy and Penelope wrought beautiful robes and hangings in their looms, embroidering them with rich needlework. On a Greek vase from Chiusi, Penelope is represented at work on a loom of the “high warp” (haute-lisse) or vertical pattern which is used so much to-day by the embroiderers and carpet weavers of the East. We have many allusions in the Bible to those who made all kinds of cunning needlework. Josephus says that the veil of the Temple at Jerusalem “was a Babylonian curtain embroidered with blue and fine linen, with scarlet and purple, and of a texture that was wonderful.”
In England, during the Anglo-Saxon times, embroidered work had a great reputation, so much so that it was greatly prized and in request in France and other parts of Europe, where it was known as “Anglicum Opus.” From an inventory of Charles V. of France (1364-80) we learn that he had a room furnished with English “hullings” or hangings embroidered in blue, with figures of lions, eagles, and leopards. Embroidery was the chief occupation of Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman ladies. Bede and other old historians frequently extolled the excellence of design and workmanship of the English embroidered palls, copes, corporals, chasubles, and hangings. After the Conquest and during the Norman period all kinds of heraldic devices were introduced amongst the ornament and floriated patterns; sometimes stories and romances were illustrated with the needle, and belonging to this order the famous Bayeux Tapestry may be mentioned, which represented in the form of a long frieze the Conquest of England by the Normans. It is supposed to have been wrought by Queen Matilda and her maidens, but was probably made to the order of Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, and brother-in-law to the Queen. It is not only a celebrated piece of needlework, but is an invaluable record of the costume of the period (Fig. 271). A coloured photograph of it is now in the Kensington Museum.
Fig. 271.—Norman Archer from the Bayeux Tapestry.
About the date of the thirteenth century various technical names were given to the different kinds of embroidery, such as “opus plumarium,” or, as it is now called, “feather-stitch,” a kind of needlework where the stitches are laid lengthwise, and not across, overlapping each other like the feathers in a bird’s plumage; “opus pulvinarium,” or “cushion” style, where the work is done in cross and tent stitch; “opus pectineum,” where the embroidery is made to represent or imitate weaving, and had the design carried through from front to back of the foundation material. The Opus Anglicum, so highly prized, seems to have been a kind of chain-stitch embroidery, giving a granulated surface. The workwoman would start, for instance, in the case of executing the face of a human figure, at a point in the centre of the cheek or chin, and work around it in a circular method, and where the hollows and dimples would occur, a heated metal rod with a small bulb at the end of it would be used to press down the cavities.
Fig. 272.—Part of the Orphrey of the Syon Cope; in the South Kensington Museum.
In the well-known Syon Cope, an English embroidery of this period (Fig. 272), both the old feather-stitch and the chain-stitch are used as above described.
Fig. 273.—Carpet from Persia, embroidered in Gold and Silver on Dark Blue Velvet; Early Eighteenth Century. (S.K.M.)
The Crewel stitch is a combination of the long and short feather-stitches, and is adapted for shading effects. In the stitches known as chain, knotted, and button-hole stitch the thread is looped; but lies flat in satin-stitch, crewel, darning, tent, and cross stitches. Satin and darning stitches can be worked so that the design appears the same on both sides of the cloth, but chain and crewel stitch only produces the design on one side of the material.
Fig. 274.—State Gloves, formerly belonging to Louis XIII. (S.K.M.)
Gold thread has been used very much in all ages in embroidery, and silver thread also, but unless the latter is varnished or lacquered it goes black by tarnishing. Gold “passing” is a silver-gilt thread wound around silk.
In old embroideries and woven tissues a gold thread was made of thin parchment gilded and twisted around silk: the Japanese used gilded paper in the same way, and sometimes the pure gold was used in thin, flat, beaten-out strips for both embroideries and woven fabrics.
In Persia and in the East generally an extensive use is made of cloths of gold and silver embroidery (Fig. 273) as well as closely-covered needlework in silk and wool, and another modern kind is white silk embroidery on white cambric or calico.
Cut work or “appliqué” is another form of embroidery, where flowers, foliage, ornament, and figures are separately wrought with the needle, and the spaces cut out of the ground material into which these pieces were inserted. Many examples of Spanish, Rhenish, and Florentine needlework may be seen in the Kensington Museum, in which the architectural portions of the design are woven, and the figures of saints and other subjects worked on fine canvas and inserted in the panel spaces. Another and commoner kind of appliqué work is where the ornamental shapes are cut out of silk, velvet, linen, or woollen material, and sewed on to the cloth foundation, an edging material being used consisting of silk cord, gilt leather, or gimp. Appliqué work is more adapted for hangings and furniture coverings than for dress material, though it was formerly used for dresses. The illustration (Fig. 274) gives a very good idea of the style of ornament in Spanish or French embroidery of the Renaissance period.
Tapestry.
Tapestry weaving is an art that requires greater care and skill on the part of the workman than any other branch of textile manufacture, especially in that kind known as “storied tapestry,” in which is woven a design or picture copied from a previously executed cartoon.
Tapestry is woven in the “high warp” (haute-lisse) or in the “low warp” loom: in the former case the loom is vertical, and in the latter horizontal. The largest sized and the more important kinds of tapestry, such as the “Gobelins,” are made in the high warp looms.
On account of the skill required, the accuracy and difficulty connected with the weaving of storied tapestry, it takes a long time to educate and perfect the training of a tapestry weaver—who must be an artist himself, so much being left to him in the selection, harmonizing, and shading of the different colours, even after the design is made that he is required to copy.
In tapestry weaving the warp is covered by the woof on both its sides. The warp is divided into two leaves or parts by a thread, and by a glass rod or tube called the bâton de croisure.
“To form the web, the workman takes a shuttle mounted with wool or silk, the end of which he fastens to the warp to the left of the space to be covered by the colour in his shuttle; then passing his left hand between the two leaves, separated by the bâton de croisure, he draws towards him the thread which this shade is to cover; his right hand, passing between the threads, lays hold of the shuttle, which he brings to the right, and his left hand taking hold of the coats brings forward the back thread of the warp, while the right hand returns the shuttle to the place from which it was first moved. This passing and returning of the shuttle forms what is called two shoots or a course.” (De Champeaux).
One of the great difficulties of the weaver is the shading off or gradation of the colours, which is rendered more difficult by the design being reproduced on the wrong side from the position of the weaver. Hatching and stippling are resorted to in order to prevent a harsh or mosaic-like appearance, and it is here that the great skill and artistic knowledge of the weaver are most required. An extraordinary number of tones and shades are used in an important piece of work, all of which require to be fast dyed in colour in order to secure durability of tone in the fabric. It is said that M. Chevreul, the late famous French chemist and director of the dyeing department of the Gobelins, had composed a chromatic prism of 14,420 different tones.
The best wool used in principal tapestry works on the Continent has always been imported from Kent in England.
The art of tapestry weaving was originally acquired from the East, where carpets of a floral and ornamental design were woven in the imitation of the old hand-made embroideries. In Europe the names of Sarazins or Sarazinois tapestry were given to these products from the fact that they were made and exported by the Saracens. Perhaps the earliest woven tapestries of Europe were the Flemish, which were first made towards the end of the twelfth century. The towns of Arras, Oudenarde, Lille, Brussels, Valenciennes, Tournay, and Bruges were celebrated for the manufacture of tapestry, of which the town of Arras was the most important, hence the old name of “Arras” used in England for all kinds of storied tapestry.
Flanders was a rich and powerful country during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and at that time the ports of Bruges and Antwerp were the greatest in the world. The various trades were protected by the great corporations or guilds against the encroachments of the nobles on their rights, and the most sturdy and turbulent of all the guilds was that of the Flemish weavers, by reason of their numbers and general prosperity of their trade. The product of the Flemish looms found its way to all parts of Europe and particularly to England, and as far as design and workmanship were concerned, and in the flat treatment of the former to the material, these old Flemish tapestries have never been excelled. The flat decorative treatment in the figure subjects of the earlier work, consisting of allegorical designs and romances by such artists as Roger van der Weyden, Stuerbout, Hugo van der Goes, and other artists of the Van Eyck school, were singularly appropriate to the material, and immensely superior to the more gorgeous effects of colour and misapplied shading of the later French tapestries. Examples of this earlier work are still in existence in the museums and palaces of Europe.
Louis XI., King of France, took the town of Arras in 1477, and this was practically the death blow to the manufacture of tapestry at that place, but immediately after this event Brussels under the Burgundian rule rose to great prosperity. Artists and tapestry weavers flocked to Brussels, which soon became a great centre of this industry. Designs were sent from Italy by the Popes and other princes to be woven in tapestry, and many of the best Italian and Flemish painters made designs for the Brussels ateliers. Pope Leo X. had the tapestries—now in the Vatican—from the celebrated cartoons by Raphael, made in Brussels. These cartoons are now in the Kensington Museum. They were bought by Charles I. from a tapestry manufactory of Brussels by the advice of Rubens.
Giulio Romano, the Italian painter, Lucas van Leyden, Bernard van Orley, Jean Mabuse, and other artists of the Renaissance period, furnished designs for Brussels tapestry.
Owing to the occupation of Flanders by the Spanish (1555-1648), the palace at Madrid contains the most extensive collection of Flemish tapestries in existence, which had been chiefly acquired during that period.
Tapestry making declined and was almost non-existent during the religious wars of the sixteenth century, but was re-established and became once more a flourishing industry in the seventeenth century, and a decree was passed in 1647 for its support by the State.
The subjects of the storied tapestry were now of a more naturalistic order: hunting scenes, landscapes, and rustic figures were woven from the designs of the Dutch and Flemish painters of the period, and many of the designs were copied from French tapestry.
The family of Pannemaker, celebrated at a former period in Brussels, set up an important atelier in Lille about 1647, which remained in full working order for about fifty years. Another well-known tapestry master named Guillaume Werniers (1701-1738) executed many compositions designed by Teniers.
Among the earliest tapestry manufactories in France was the one established at Fontainebleau in the year 1539 by Francis I. It was managed by Philibert Babou, the king’s architect, and Serlio, the Italian architect and painter, designed some of the tapestries. The same manufactory existed under Henri II., with Delorme for its director and Ducerceau as the chief designer. Many tapestry weavers were attracted to France from Flanders and Italy at this period, and a colony of Flemish weavers who had settled in Paris were joined to the house of the Gobelins—a long-established family of scarlet wool dyers—in the Faubourg Saint Marcel in 1603. The house of the Gobelins had been under royal patronage for some time previous to the year 1667, when it was bought by Louis XIV. and henceforth became a royal monopoly.
Lebrun, the painter to the king, was appointed director. Some very heavy and inappropriate compositions of this painter were copied in the Gobelins tapestry, but besides these, many purely decorative and ornamental designs with rich borders were also produced. This was a period of great activity at the Gobelins factory, when nearly three hundred workmen and artists were employed. Mignard was the successor of Lebrun as director of the works (1690), then Mansard the architect. After him came the Duc d’Antin as director (1708-36), and then M. de Marigny, under whom many large paintings were reproduced in tapestry, and smaller designs of Boucher and others. This celebrated factory, like that of the Sèvres porcelain, still remains under State care and patronage.
Several other tapestry manufactories existed in Paris from the early days of the Gobelins, and a new kind of tapestry-carpet called the Savonnerie—a kind of velvet carpet made in imitation of the Oriental Turkey-stitch, was introduced into France under the patronage of Henri IV. (1580-1610), the looms being set up in the Louvre. This carpet manufactory was united to the Gobelins factory in 1826.
At Beauvais a celebrated manufactory of low warp tapestry has been in existence from early times, and though some of the Beauvais compositions are equal to the high warp productions of the Gobelins, the work as a rule consists of a smaller and more ornamental character of design.
Rheims, Aubusson, and Felletin have also been centres of the French tapestry industry. Aubusson carpets and tapestry have been noted for their soft and delicate textures, and have been used very much for furniture upholstery.
Italy has produced some good storied tapestry in the sixteenth century (Fig. 275), but has been more celebrated for its velvets, &c.
England has been content to import more tapestry than it has ever manufactured, although many important works have been executed at different times in this country. Probably the earliest piece of genuine English tapestry is that which still adorns the old St. Mary’s Hall or Council-chamber in Coventry, and may have been made in the fourteenth, or early fifteenth, century.
In the laws of Edward IV. (1344) tapestry making is mentioned, and in the reign of Henry VIII., and the year 1509, Sheldon and Hicks set up a tapestry manufactory at Barcheston in Warwickshire.
Fig. 275.—Dismissal of Hagar and Ishmael by Abraham; Italian Tapestry; Sixteenth Century.
The most important tapestry works were those set up at Mortlake, near London, in the reign of James I., by Francis Crane, and which were liberally supported by James and his son Charles I. During the reign of the latter monarch the Mortlake works furnished a great many important hangings for the royal palaces of Windsor, Hampton Court, Greenwich, and St. James’s, among which were the reproductions of the celebrated cartoons of Raphael, which Charles I. had purchased from Brussels. Some of these tapestries are now preserved in the “Garde Meuble” at Paris. Mythological subjects, framed with rich borders, were designed by Francis Cheyne, a native of Saxony, who was the principal artist employed at the Mortlake works. During the wars of the Commonwealth the factory was closed, but was re-opened at the Restoration of Charles II., who passed some Acts for the encouragement of English tapestry making, and put restrictions on the great importations of foreign tapestries. The latter king employed Verrio the painter to make designs for the Mortlake textiles. On the death of Francis Crane, the founder, in 1703, the works were finally closed.
Unimportant tapestry works were in existence at Soho and Fulham about the middle of the eighteenth century. Another attempt at tapestry weaving was made by a French Protestant refugee named Passavant, who established a factory at Exeter about the end of the seventeenth century, and of late years there has been an attempt made to carry on tapestry weaving at Windsor under the patronage of Her Majesty.
Some excellent work, equal if not superior to some of the best Flemish tapestry, has been successfully made by William Morris from the designs of Sir Edward Burne-Jones.
England has given great attention to the manufacture of low warp carpets, in which she is only excelled by some of the best products of Oriental looms. The manufacture of printed and woven carpets now forms one of the most important factors in the national prosperity of England. Brussels carpets are now made chiefly at Kidderminster; originally they were made at Wilton. Axminster and Kidderminster carpets are made in Glasgow, Wilton, and Kilmarnock, and Wilton carpets in Yorkshire.
Turkey carpets are imported chiefly from Smyrna. Persia, India, and Tunis are still great centres of the Eastern carpet industry. The carpets from these places are in great request in Europe for their beauty of colour and design and for their great wearing qualities.
Carpets were originally used as portières, table and couch coverings, but have gradually become coverings for floors, owing to their cheapened cost of production.