Crochet, knitting done with linen thread, and the thick kinds of lace wrought (chiefly in Flanders) upon the cushion with bobbins, were much employed under the name of nun’s lace from the sixteenth century and upwards, for bordering altar-cloths, albs, and every sort of towel required for church purposes.
CHAPTER X.
Tapestry is neither real weaving nor true embroidery, but in a manner unites in its working those two processes into one. Though wrought in a loom and upon a warp stretched out along its frame, it has no woof thrown across those threads with a shuttle or any like appliance but its weft is done with many short threads, all variously coloured and put in by a needle. It is not embroidery, though so very like it, for tapestry is not worked upon what is really a web, having both warp and woof, but upon a series of closely set fine strings.
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 ornaments 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 secular 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.”