AND SAVONNERIE CARPETS. 285 
of a general and not agreeable tone, discordant colours (always the same), 
gave place to an imitation more and more rigorous and correct ; it then 
became necessary to increase the number of shades — light shades in par- 
ticular, and to employ a greater number of subdued colours, otherwise 
weakened and rendered dim by a certain quantity of black ; the primi- 
tive simplicity of the work disappears, difficulties augment, and the hand 
of the workman acquires a proportionate value. Such changes could not 
be effected without opposition on the part of the manager and of the 
operatives, opposition the sharper as the latter worked by piece or task 
work, the quantity made being to them their daily bread, and which 
they must each day defend against the growing demands of their imme- 
diate chiefs, and of the painters who superintended the artistic part of 
the work. 
We need not be astonished, then, at the complaints which resounded 
through this manufactory during a great part of the eighteenth century, 
nor at the ardour of the workmen, in 1790, to conquer a different admi- 
nistration, that of free work and by the day. Contemporaneously with 
these disputes, persevering efforts, crowned with success, were made by 
one of the master tapestry-makers to the King, Jacques Neilson, to im- 
prove the basse lice work, fallen into complete decay before his nomina- 
tion as head of the department (1449), the trade of basse lice was brought 
to perfection by Vaucanson (1757), and very important works carried 
out by a skilful dyer named Quemiset (1773 — 1779), under the conduct 
of J. Neilson, to raise the dyeing of wool and silk to the level of the 
new requirements of the fabrication. This movement, seconded by the 
architect Soufflot, then manager of the Koyal Manufactures of Tapestry 
(1775 — 1780), did not last long enough to bring about really useful 
results. It was put an end to in consequence of the death almost 
simultaneously of Quemiset, of the sons of Neilson, and of Soufflot. 
But these early efforts determined the superior administration, then 
in the hands of M. Le Comte d'Angivillers, to establish for this manu- 
facture a scientific element, which until then had been unknown. The 
chemists Cornette and Darcet "were called upon to take charge of the 
dyeing ; the latter, named as inspector of this department in the work- 
shops (the 15th August, 1786), took up the work commenced some 
years before ; but it was not long before he himself was stopped in his 
researches by the sudden reforms which followed the fall of the monarchy 
(1792). Much about the same time the inspector of dyeing, the chief 
dyer, and the three painters attached to the manufactory, were dismissed 
as useless ; the school of design was closed; one of the master tapestry- 
makers, the master Audran, secret promoter of all these changes, took 
the place of the architect Guillaumot, who had directed the royal manu- 
factories of tapestry since the decease of M. Pierre, first painter to the 
King, Louis XVI. (17&9). Audran re-established taskwork, suppressed 
two years before, at the suggestion of his predecessor. This return to an 
order of things precipitated his fall ; after less than a year he was ac- 
