There are three different mills engaged on their work, one of which last year supplied them with $30,000 worth. The work is a great advertisement to a mill—such recognition have these fabrics gained, here and in Europe, for fineness, design and beauty. Several European decorators of first rate have sent for samples of them. Foreign artists and designers visiting this country regularly have in their note-book memoranda to see the wonderful new American fabrics at the Associated Artists. These goods have also been used for garments. Mrs. Langtry, Mrs. Cornwallis West and Ellen Terry bought largely of them for their wardrobes. Felix Moschelles, artist, and son of that Moschelles who was the biographer of Mendelssohn, declared that there was nothing in Europe to compare with these joint products of American artists and artisans. Truly, there is nothing on the shelves of dry goods men on either continent to match them; they revive the traditions of the wonderful products of Oriental looms.
Another chef d’œuvre of these artists is their tapestry work. It has the definiteness and freedom of drawing, and the delicacy and feeling of color of an oil painting; nay, deft fingers with a needle and thread can produce effects in colors that the painter’s brush can not, because colored threads reflect and complement each other. This work is done upon the surface of a canvas, the stitch being similar to that used upon “honey comb canvas,” all surface work. To make it more effective, a fabric has been woven with a double warp, the embroidery being run in under the upper thread, somewhat like darning. The process and fabrics were invented by Mrs. Wheeler and are protected by letters-patent in this country and Europe.
A portrait was woven in this way, thread by thread, so faithful as to be preferred by the family, to the best work they had of photographer or painter. A piece of this tapestry has been under the hands of from one to three embroiderers—or darners, if you please—every day for nearly a year. It is one of ten large needle-work pictures of American subjects now in preparation. One of them is a Zuni Indian girl, by Miss Rosina Emmett, and another, “Hiawatha,” a typical Indian girl of the North, by Miss Dora Wheeler. (These two artists are directors of the Association.) The pictures are life size, and are very characteristic studies. The remaining eight tapestries are mainly upon events of American history. Only close examination would convince any one that they were not oil paintings. After seeing this work I am inclined to think less of the famous Bayeux tapestry and all other pictorial needlework. William the Conqueror was unwise not to have deferred his exploits until Yankee girls could embroider them. The best we can now offer William is to invade and conquer England over again—with American tapestry.
These high-class works are mentioned simply to show the height that this line of decorative art has reached, in a short time, by the efforts of native genius and mechanical skill.
Nor is the story yet all told of the relation of design to manufactures. One of the largest manufacturers of paper hangings in this country not long since offered prizes amounting to $2,000 for the best four designs for wall paper. The competition was great, sixty designs being entered by European artists, and many times more by American. When the awards were opened the examining committee, as well as the donors, were astonished to learn that the Associated Artists had taken all the prizes, the European trained talent none. Now, the freshest, best-selling patterns for wall paper are of American design.
There is more still to tell that is gratifying to patriotism. These efforts have discovered to the world, as a fact, what was before the cherished theory of a few, viz.: that an American school of art already existed, dominant in brains and hands, waiting to be awakened to activity. There is a distinctive character in all that has been done in decoration, different from anything seen in other people’s work. It has a nationality in choice of subjects and materials, an originality in conception, a freedom and freshness in treatment, that fairly mark the beginning of a new school. More than that, when the work of native designers has come in comparison with that of the Kensington or other schools, it has justified the opinion that was expressed at the outset as to the ability of our women to surpass the latter.
When the Decorative Society was organized, it sent to Kensington for a teacher, and employed the one that was the most highly recommended by the management there. At the close of the very first lesson that was given by this instructor to the leading ladies of the society, she was overcome by the reception her teaching had met. “Why,” she said, ruefully, “these ladies have got from me, in a single lesson, all that I know. I have nothing more to teach them.” This incident reveals the reason for the contrast in work—gives the explanation of the stereotyped forms and stiff designs of the foreign school. The difference is in the human material that enters into the work in either case—the difference of development and general culture back of special art training. The English girl who is forced to earn a livelihood by needlework, and qualifies therefor at Kensington, represents a different order of preparatory training, general culture, social position and aims, from those leaders in art who engage in the work con amore in this country. But there is, also, a race difference that runs through all society in both countries. The American woman is a thinker—the English an observer; the American woman is by nature an innovator, the English conventional; the one an originator, the other an imitator. The same climatic, dietary, social and political influences that make the American artisan the most inventive and free handicraftsman in the world; the American business man the most daring and rapid, have conspired to make their sisters, and their cousins, and their aunts the most original and apt pupils of art in the world. We may confidently look to them, and the sons that they shall give their country, to go on and create for it a school of art as free and as characteristic as are all our institutions.
The movement is but in the embryo stage. All this is the result of a single effort, and it is still young. Time is of the essence of art culture, and the United States offers ample verge and scope enough for a wonderful work in the future. The field for invention in decorative art is boundless, because genius may touch every item and phase of home and carry into the innermost life of the whole people the refining influence of Beauty.