Another set of “high-warp tapestry, worked in Arras thread and gold” was called “The Chamber of the Coronation of Our Lady.” It was furnished with “a canopy, a head-board, a bed coverlet, and six curtains two of which were worked with gold, and the remaining four without gold. On each of these were two figures, the late Duke Anthony of Brabant and his wife and their children, screened with a small dosser; the whole was of Brabant work.”
In addition to these superb sets, there were sixty “saloon tapestries” in which the hangings woven with gold depicted scenes from famous romances, stories from Grecian mythology, pastoral scenes, and contemporary events.
There were thirty-six dossers, banquiers and thirty-six hassocks, and nineteen long-pile carpets. Then there were thirteen “chapel hangings,” with religious subjects, an altar-cloth “entirely of gold and silk,” besides high-warp tapestries “of gold and Arras thread.”
Philip the Good was also a collector of embroidery. In his inventory (1420) are mentioned many “chambres” of velvet and silk, embroidered with gold and silks. More than thirty famous embroiderers were employed regularly at the Court of Burgundy.
There was no more valuable possession in the Middle Ages than tapestry. When Mary of Burgundy was married to the Duke of Cleves in 1415, one prized item in her dowry was a “superb bed of tapestry representing a deer hunt.”
Tapestry was considered one of the most complimentary gifts that could be offered to a royal personage, or diplomatist; and when it is remembered that every nobleman of wealth was a collector, a present of this nature had to be of rare quality and exceptional beauty. The Dukes of Burgundy were fond of making gifts from the looms they patronized.
For example, Philip the Bold sent several pieces to Richard II in 1394 and 1395, and superb sets to the Dukes of Lancaster and York. John the Fearless gave the Earl of Pembroke, ambassador of Henry IV, three handsome pieces, and to the Earl of Warwick, ambassador of Henry V, in 1416, “a rich hanging covered with various figures and numerous birds.” In 1414, a “chambre de tapisserie” was sent as a present to Robert, Duke of Albany, who then governed Scotland.
The weavers of Liège boasted as high an antiquity as those of Louvain. The Chronicle of St. Trond says that the weavers in 1133 at St. Trond and Tongres, and they were more independent and high-spirited, or, to quote more exactly, “more forward and proud than other artisans.”
Brussels, which in after years eclipsed both Paris and Arras in the manufacture of tapestries, possessed one corporation only of tapestry-workers (tapitewevers) in 1340. In 1448, these were reorganized under the name of Legwerckers Ambacht (tapestry-weavers trade), but there was no great interest in the Brussels looms until 1466, when Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, bought in that city The History of Hannibal in six pieces and a set of eight landscapes.
The looms of Ypres, Middelburg, Alost, Lille, Valenciennes, Douay and Oudenarde flourished during the fifteenth century. To this list we must add the fine looms of Bruges, established by Philip the Good, which for a time eclipsed all others in Flanders. After Bruges supplied this Duke of Burgundy with The History of the Sacrament and “two chambers of tapestry” in 1440, many commissions were received from foreign countries. The Medicis and other Italian families ordered rich sets, but they supplied their own cartoons by Andrea Mantegna, Leonardo da Vinci and other great painters.