February, 1912 
AMERICAN 
HOMES AND GARDENS 47 
These two illustrations show the front and the back of an Aubusson chair back, woven in silk and wool. Note the irregularity of the floating 
threads, which if removed would disclose the same design, reversed, that appears on the right side of this tapestry. A genuine example of this 
sort with back to match would cost $400 
they are worth. Out of twenty large tapestries the writer 
recently examined in an auction-room, seventeen had never 
been especially good, while the other three were so 
badly repaired as hardly to merit house room. Herein lies 
a lesson that the amateur of tapestries should take to heart. 
Mere age counts for little. The value of an inferior work 
of art does not increase as the generations pass, although 
the price paid by ignoramuses sometimes does. It is the 
tapestry, or rug, or chair, or table, that artistically excels 
which multiplies in value more rapidly than the interest on 
money, and at last is enshrined in the palace of a collector, in 
the museum of a great city or nation. 
The only museum in the United States that contains a 
collection of fine tapestries to an extent worth considering 
is the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Com- 
pared with the forty splendid pieces now displayed on its 
walls, the collections of the Boston and Chicago art mu- 
seums—as well as of the Metropolitan Museum itself five 
years ago—are insignificant. The collection of books on 
tapestry in the library of the Metropolitan Museum is also 
large and important. 
The prize tapestry in the Metropolitan collection is one 
in the Gothic style, lent by Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan and 
called the Mazarin tapestry, because tradition says that it 
once belonged to the famous French Cardinal who chast- 
ened the youthful haughtiness of Louis XIV. The subject 
of this tapestry, which is partitioned after the fashion of 
a three-fold screen, with Gothic columns between the leaves, 
is “Christ Proclaiming the New Dispensation.” The Christ 
is seated on a throne in the upper part of the middle panel, 
with angels on each side of Him, one bearing a long branch 
with lilies, symbolic of the Church; the other a sword, sym- 
bolic of the State. Below are two groups of worshippers, 
the Church group headed by the Pope and the State group 
by the Emperor. A figure representing the Synagogue of 
the Old Dispensation appears on the right, blinded, with 
broken sceptre and shattered tablets of the Mosaic law, 
while the State of the New Dispensation is represented by 
the Persian King Ahasuerus (Xerxes) and Esther. A 
figure representing the Holy Catholic Church of the New 
Dispensation appears on the left with crozier and chalice, 
while the State of the New Dispensation is represented by 
Emperor Augustus, to whom the Tiburtine Sibyl announces 
the coming of the Messiah. Technically, this is one of the 
most wonderful, perhaps the most wonderful, tapestry ever 
woven. Certainly the flesh tones of faces and hands and 
of the tiny nude figures of Adam and Eve, and the silver 
tones of hair and beards, and the gold and jewels of the 
costumes are marvelously expressed. 
Almost in the same class as regards excellence of weave 
are two Renaissance tapestries illustrating the ‘Story of 
Herse,” lent by Mr. George Blumenthal. They were woven 
in Brussels by Willem van Pannemaker, whose woven sig- 
nature, together with the Brussels monogram, appears in 
the border. The borders are rich with gold in basket weave, 
and the one of the two tapestries that show the ‘“‘Bridal 
Chamber of Herse” is almost equal to the great Gothic 
tapestries as regards the suitability of the design for inter- 
pretation on the loom. ‘Tapestries like these, however, are 
beyond the reach, even at present prices, of all but the 
greatest collectors, and therefore the writer would call at- 
tention to other tapestries, excellent duplicates of which can 
be bought or reproduced at prices that make them available 
more generally for adorning the home. At this point I 
should like to remark that the nouveau riche dog-in-the- 
manger spirit which locks up many famous paintings in 
