So, as we have seen, new times and new modes caused the Gobelins to
copy paintings instead of to interpret cartoons--and there lay the
destruction of their art. Instead of four-score tones, the dyers hung
on their lines tens and tens of thousands. And the weavers wove them
all into their fabric-painting, with the result that when the light
lay on them long, the delicate shades faded and with them was lost the
meaning of the design. And that is why the Gobelins of the older time
are worth more as decoration than those of the later.
We are doing a little better nowadays. There is a limit to the tones,
and in all new work a decided tendency to abandon the copying of
brush-shading in favour of a more restricted gamut of colour. By this
means the future worker may regain the lost charm of the simple old
pieces of work.
Another room in the factory of tapestry interests those who like to
see the creation of things. It is one of the prettiest rooms of all,
and is more than ever like a kindergarten for grown-ups. Or, if you
like, it is a chamber in a feudal castle where the women gather when
the men are gone to war.
Here the workers are all girls and women, each bending over a large
embroidery frame supported at a convenient level from the floor. On
one frame is a long flowered border with cartouches in the strong rich
colours of Louis XIV. On another a sofa-seat copied from Boucher. They
are both new, but like all work fresh from the loom are full of the
open slits left in the process of weaving, a necessity of the changing
colours and the requirements of the drawing.
All these little slits, varying from half an inch to several inches in
length, must be sewed with strong, careful stitches before the
tapestry can be considered complete.
On other frames are stretched old tapestries for repairs. At the
Gobelins as many as forty women are thus employed. The malapropos
deduction springs here that the demand for repaired old work is
greater than that for new in the famous factory, for only six or eight
weavers are there occupied.
Repairing is almost an art in itself. The emperor established a small
school at Berlin for training girls in this trade. The studio of the
late Mr. Ffoulke in Florence kept twenty or thirty girls occupied. The
Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has a repair studio under a
graduate of the Berlin school. The factories of Baumgarten and of
Herter, in New York, also conduct repairs; and the museum at Boston as
well.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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