It is necessary to define precisely what is meant by the word “tapestry.”[380] The term has been applied to all hangings, and so caused confusion between those that are embroidered with a design, on a plain or brocaded woven material, and those which are inwoven with the design from the first.[381] This latter was called in classical language, “opus pectineum,” because it was woven with the help of a comb (the “slay”),[382] to push the threads tight between each row of stitches; and the individual stitches were put in with a sort of a needle, or by the fingers only, and laid on the warp. It was thus practised by the Egyptians, by the Persians, Indians, and Peruvians; and in Egypt was often finished by embroidery. (Pl. [46].) In Egyptian tombs we have evidence of their tapestry, from the mural paintings representing men and women weaving pictures in upright looms. The comb which served to push the threads together after the stitches were laid in is sometimes found in the weaver’s tomb.
We have, in the British Museum, pieces of “opus pectineum” from Saccarah, in Egypt; and also fragments from a Peruvian tomb, of barbarous design, but the weaving is equal to the Egyptian; and both resemble the Gobelins weaving of to-day. Whence came the craft of the Peruvians?
Tapestry is woven in two ways, by a high or by a low-warp loom (haute-lisse or basse-lisse), vertical or horizontal. The “slay” is the implement which is peculiar to the craft. I shall not enter into any description of the mode of working the looms, as this has been thoroughly well done by masters of the art.[383] But I would call attention to the Frontispiece, copied from a Greek vase, where Penelope is portrayed sitting by her haute-lisse frame. I also refer the reader to the illustration from the Rheims tapestries, in which a mediæval artist shows the Blessed Virgin weaving at one that is horizontal or “basse-lisse.” (Pl. [47].)
Pl. 47.
Portion of a Tapestry Hanging. Cathedral. Rheims. The Virgin weaves and embroiders at a basse-lisse frame.
For the best information I have been able to obtain regarding tapestry weaving, I must acknowledge my indebtedness to M. Albert Castel’s “Bibliothèque des Merveilles.”[384] He has given great care to the consideration of this subject, and has collected good evidences to prove his conclusions, which I willingly accept en bloc. Of course he has chiefly dealt with the French branch of the art, and with the Flemish, from which it immediately descends. He begins, however, by quoting Pliny, to prove the antiquity of weaving, and gives a verse of Martial’s to this effect: “Thou owest this work to the land of Memphis, where the slay of the Nile has vanquished the needle of Babylon.”[385]
Homer makes Helen weave the story of the siege of Troy; this may have been partly embroidered; and there are some pieces of woven tapestry introduced most ingeniously into the web of a linen shirt or garment, of which the sleeve is in the Egyptian department of the British Museum, proving that figures were pictured by weaving quite as early as the date of Troy, and unmistakably finished with the needle (Plate [18]); at any rate, as early as the days of Homer. Arachne’s web was interwoven with figures. She and Minerva rivalled each other in ingenious design and perfect execution. The description of the beautiful hangings they wove, the glorious colours with their tenderly graduated tints, and the graceful borders, appear to be almost prophetic of the highest efforts of the looms of the Gobelins.[386][387] Arachne’s name is derived from the Hebrew word for weaving, “Arag.”
It appears that the town now called Arras, but anciently Nomenticum, was always a centre of the trade of the weavers;[388] for Flavius Vopiscus, writing in A.D. 282, says that thence came the Byrri—woven cloaks with hoods, which were much in vogue amongst all classes in the later Roman Empire. The craft of weaving, which flourished in the Flemish and other adjacent countries, seems to have become native to that soil, and to have clung to it, surviving many historical cataclysms.[389]