276 ON THE MANUFACTURE OF GOBELINS TAPESTRY 
hangings and for the carpets which he ordered. (a) At Poitiers, in 1025, 
there was a manufactory of tapestry and of carpets on which were re- 
presented figures of animals, portraits of emperors, and subjects taken 
from sacred history ;(&) the towns of Reims, Troyes, Beauvais, Aubusson, 
Felletin, Tours, and Arras, had seen this industry naturalised amongst 
them at an early date.(c) 
In the considerable development and progress which these distant 
epochs present, net only in France, but also in different parts of Europe 
and above all in Flanders, the East can only claim the primitive ele- 
ments, and the fact of a simple initiation ; the coarse images and rude 
figures with insipid colouring traced on some of the ancient Persian or 
Byzantine tissues, are very different from the personages and scenes re- 
presented on the tapestries of the West. 
The history of this branch of the arts in France since the ninth 
century appears to divide itself into three distinct epochs : — 
In the first, the tapestry worker only makes use of a simple and 
expeditious process ; he has his invariable tone composed of a few- 
tame colours fixed on the wool or silk by the dyer, and for models 
simple designs, superficially tinged, of which he makes, with regard to 
colouring, but an inaccurate imitation and purely conventional ; all is 
combined for expeditious work. The tapestries that result from this 
system present, and only can present (whatever may have been at first 
the quality of the models employed), a uniform tone in all their similar 
details, and an absolute want of harmony. This was the era of industrial 
tapestry, an epoch which seems to embrace the whole of the productions 
of this art, from its origin in France to the foundation in 1662, of the 
manufacture of regal furniture by Louis XIV. 
The second epoch is that where by taking a new direction, the worker 
gradually abandons his own colouring, and where the models, too, are 
modified. Simple designs lightly touched give way to paintings more 
and more finished. Such changes cannot be effected without difficulty ; 
they gave rise to a struggle between the industrial and artistic principles, 
a struggle which was personified in the Gobelins manufacture, from 
1662 until towards the end of the eighteenth century. 
In the third and last epoch, industrial tradition and conventional 
colouring disappear as much as the nature of the tissue and the re- 
sources of the dyer permitted with the employment of wool and silk 
(a) In palliis adquirendis, in tapetibns faciendis. Vit. S. Gerv., c. vii. ; 
apud d'Ach. et Mab., Ibid., torn, ix., p. 322. 
(b) Hist. Episc. Antis^iod, cap. liii., apud Labbe, Nov. Bibl. Manuser., torn. 
i., p. 457; Le Boeuf, Mem. Concern. 1'hist. d'Aux., torn, i., parti, p. 258; 
Chron. Gaufredi, cap. ix, apud Labbe, Ibid., torn, ii., p. 283 ; Episc. Carnut. 
elogia — apud Mabill. Analecta vet. monum., torn ii., 598. 
(c) In this enumeration of towns, Arras is comprised as having been a part of 
France for two centuries ; but, in reality, it is to Flanders that the celebrity 
belongs of this town in its industry in carpets and hangings. 
