292 ON THE MANUFACTURE OF GOBELINS TAPESTRY 
Method of Weaving Tapestry. 
The Gobelins tapestries and Savonnerie carpets are both made in 
high warp looms. Tapestries present, like all interwoven cloths, a 
warp and a woof, "but the woof alone appears both on the right side and 
on the wrong ; the warp is wool, it may also be cotton or even silk, or 
other fibres used in tapestry ; it is vertically held on two rollers called 
beams ; the threads parallel to each other, and on the same level, are 
passed alternately over a staff called the croisure (cross-web), so that 
one- half of the threads are, relatively to the worker, forward, and the 
other half backward. But the backward thread may be drawn forward 
by means of rings of pack-thread called lices which surround them, and 
are held at the opposite side, on a fixed rod placed below the cross- 
web staff, at a little distance from the plane of the warp. 
For Gobelins the cross -web staff is a glass tube from two to three 
inches in diameter, which is called baton d'entre deux (inter-medium 
staff). 
The woof is rolled on a little instrument, made of wood, called a 
broche, terminating in a point at one end,-and which, in tapestry, is used 
instead of a shuttle. 
To form the tissue, the worker takes a broche filled with wool or 
silk of the proper colour, fastens the extremity of the thread of the 
woof on the thread of the warp at the left of the space where the shades 
are to be placed, then, passing the left hand between the threads in 
front and back, removes those that cover again that same shade ; the 
right hand passing between the same threads takes from the left the 
broche to bring it back to the right ; the left hand then seizing the 
warp, brings to the front the back threads, and the right hand darts 
the broche to the point from whence it came. This working of the 
broche, backward and forward in two opposite directions, forms what 
is technically called two passages or one row. 
The worker repeats, successively, these rows one over the other, 
according to the extent and outline of the space which the shades are to 
occupy with which the broche is filled, taking a new T broche for every 
new shade ; he cuts, stops, and loses at the wrong side of the tapestry, 
that is to say, the side on which he works, the thread of the preceding 
broche, if he is not to begin using it again near the same place. 
At each row, he draws together, with the pointed end of the broche, 
the threads of the woof of the portion of the tissue already made ; this 
first pressing together is not sufficient either to regulate the tissue, or to 
cover the warp exactly. The worker, after he has placed some rows one 
above the other, completes the compression by beating the woof with a 
heavy ivory comb, the teeth of which penetrate between the threads of 
the warp, the latter are thus completely hidden and brought to the 
same level. 
The extent that a shade occupies determines the number of threads 
