House and Garden 
In the Middle Ages the city of Arras, a part of 
France after its capture by Louis XI. in 1477—which 
put an end to tapestry weaving there—but before 
that in Flanders, became such a famous center 
of tapestry production as to give its name to 
the pictured fab- 
r i c. Tapes¬ 
tries are still 
called arazzi in 
Italy and arras 
in England. 
Who does not 
remember in 
Hamlet how 
Shakespeare de¬ 
scribes Polonius 
as eavesdrop¬ 
ping behind the 
arras and stab¬ 
bed through it ? 
From early 
times the wea¬ 
vers of Gaul and 
the Netherlands 
were renowned 
for their cloths. 
Pliny in his Nat¬ 
ural History says 
that they rivalled 
the weavers of 
Babylon and 
Alexandria. The 
most f a m o u s 
among the m 
were the Atre- 
bates whose 
name during the 
ages got abbre- 
viated into 
Arras. Itis 
chronicled that 
in the year 795 
the abbot of the 
St. Vaast near 
Arras employed 
magnificent tap¬ 
estries for the 
decoration of 
the church of 
the abbey. An 
inventory of the property of the same abbey made 
between 1155 an d 1188 enumerates a number 
of tapestries. A hall of the abbey devoted to the 
sale of tapestries is mentioned in 1250 and in 1333. 
In 1313 the Countess of Artois ordered six tapes¬ 
tries made at Arras (de faire faire six tapis a Arras), 
and about this time the Lady of Cassel paid 
twenty livres, six sous Parisian for a tapestry made 
at Arras. At this time the use of tapestries was 
general and a “chamber” of tapestries meant bed 
canopy, dossier or head piece, and bed cover, to¬ 
gether with portieres and wall hangings. In 1385 
jehan Cosset supplied the Duke of Burgundy with 
a gold-worked 
tapestry of the 
History of St. 
John, and a 
History of the 
Vices and Vir¬ 
tues. One of 
the largest tap¬ 
es t r i e s ever 
made wts wo¬ 
ven at Arras 
about 1386 by 
Michael B e r- 
nard. It cele¬ 
brated the bat¬ 
tle of Ro0se- 
becke, and con- 
t ain e d 285 
square yards, 
and was so un¬ 
wieldy that the 
Duke had it cut 
into three a few 
years later. 
However, tap¬ 
estry weaving in 
the fourteenth 
century was by 
no means con¬ 
fined to Arras. 
In Paris in 1302 
ten tapestry 
weavers of the 
haulte lisse were 
admitted into 
the corporation 
of tapissiers. 
In 1363 Nicolas 
Bataille of Paris 
sold six tapes- 
tnes to the Duke 
of Burgundy 
and in 1376 one 
of the History 
of Hector to the 
Duke of Anjou for 1000 francs. His name also 
appears in connection with other important sales 
but his fame as a master weaver rests chiefly on 
the Apocalypse series that is still preserved in the 
cathedral of Angers. The set was designed accord¬ 
ing to the register of the treasury of the Dukes of 
Anjou, by Hennequin de Bruges, the king’s painter. 
There were many tapestry weavers in England in 
MADE AT WILLIAM SB RIDGE AFTER THE ORIGINAL BY BOUCHER 
