And in Waverley he speaks of "remnants of tapestried hangings, window curtains and shreds of pictures with which he had bedizened his tatters."
After the seventeenth century, these tapestries were used for covering furniture, as the seats and backs of sofas and arm chairs, desks and screens; and fire-screens covered with tapestry as beautiful as a painting were in vogue. In the Comedy of Errors we recall this passage:
In the desk That's covered o'er with Turkish tapestry There is a purse of ducats.
Clarence Cook says: "There was a kind of tapestry made in Europe in the fifteenth century—in Flanders, probably—in which there were represented gentlemen and ladies, the chatelaine and her suite walking in the park of the chateau. The figures, the size of life, seem to be following the course of a slender stream. The park in which these noble folk are stiffly disporting is represented by a wide expanse of meadow, guiltless of perspective, stretching up to the top of the piece of stuff itself, a meadow composed of leaves and flowers—bluebells, daisies, and flowers without a name—giving the effect of a close mosaic of green, mottled with colored spots. On the meadow are scattered various figures of animals and birds—the lion, the unicorn, the stag, and the rabbit. Here, too, are hawks and parrots; in the upper part is a heron, which has been brought down by a hawk and is struggling with the victor, some highly ornamental drops of blood on the heron's breast showing that he is done for. And to return to the brook which winds along the bottom of the tapestry, it is curious to note that this part of the work is more real and directly natural in its treatment than the rest. The water is blue, and is varied by shading and by lines that show the movement of the stream; the plants and bushes growing along its borders are drawn with at least a conventional look of life, some violets and fleur-de-lis being particularly well done; and in the stream itself are sailing several ducks, some pushing straight ahead, others nibbling the grass along the bank, and one, at least, diving to the bottom, with tail and feet in the air."
The best authority on tapestries in many lands is the exhaustive work by Muntz, published in Paris, 1878-1884, by the Société anonyme de Publication Périodique—three luxuriously bound and generously illustrated volumes, entitled Histoire Générale de la Tapisserie en Italie, en Allemagne, en Angleterre, en Espagne.
We learn here that in 1630 Le François, of Rouen, incited by the Chinese colored papers imported by the missionaries, tried to imitate the silk tapestries of the wealthy in a cheaper substance. He spread powdered wool of different colors on a drawing covered with a sticky substance on the proper parts. This papier velouté, called tontisse by Le François, was exported to England, where it became known as "flock paper." The English claim a previous invention by Jeremy Lanyer, who, in 1634, had used Chinese and Japanese processes. At any rate, the manufacture of flock papers spread in England and was given up in France. Only toward the middle of the eighteenth century was the making of real colored papers (papier peints) begun in France and England. The first factory was set up in 1746, but the work was not extended further until 1780, when it was taken up by the brothers George and Frederic Echardt.
Chinese picture papers were imported into France by Dutch traders and used to decorate screens, desks, chimney-pieces, etc., as early as the end of the seventeenth century. By the middle of the eighteenth, they were an important ornament of elegant interiors. In the list of the furniture given to Mlle. Desmares by Mlle. Damours, September 25, 1746, is a fire-screen of China paper, mounted on wood, very simple. On July 25, 1755, Lazare Duvaux delivered to Mme. de Brancas, to be sent to the Dauphiness, a sheet of China paper with very beautiful vases and flowers, for making which he charged thirty livres. April 6, 1756, he sold to the Countess of Valentinois, for one hundred and forty-four livres, six sheets of China paper, painted on gauze with landscapes and figures.
May 8, 1770, M. Marin advertised for sale in a Paris newspaper twenty-four sheets of China paper, with figures and gilt ornaments, ten feet high and three and one-half feet wide, at twenty-four livres a sheet; to be sold all together, or in lots of eight sheets each. By this time whole rooms were papered. July 15, 1779, an apartment in Paris was advertised to let, having a pretty boudoir with China paper in small figures representing arts and crafts, thirteen sheets, with a length of thirty-seven feet (horizontally) and height of eight feet ten inches, with gilt beaded moulding. Dec. 31, 1781, "For sale, at M. Nicholas's, China wall-paper, glazed, blue ground, made for a room eighteen feet square, with gilt moulding."
Mr. Aumonier says: "Notwithstanding the Chinese reputation for printing from wooden blocks from time immemorial, no specimens of their work produced by that process have ever come under the notice of the author, in public museums or elsewhere, and it is far more probable that early Chinese works imported into Europe were painted by hand, in imitation of the wondrous needlework, for which, through unknown ages, the Eastern peoples have been famous. A most perfect and beautiful example of this work, of Japanese origin, may be seen in the "Queen's palace at the Hague," called the Huis-ten-Bosch—the House-in-the-Wood. This is a magnificent composition of foliage and flowers, birds and butterflies, perfect in form and beauty of tint, worked in silks on a ground of écru satin. It is composed of many breadths forming one picture, starting from the ground with rock-work, and finishing at the top of the wall with light sprays of flowers, birds, butterflies and sky; the colouring of the whole so judiciously harmonized as to be an object lesson of great value to any decorator, and worth traveling many miles to study."