Mr. Prime’s Alexander Tapestries 
By GEORGE LELAND HUNTER 
F 
^ORTY years ago Americans 
knew little about tapestry and 
cared less. The uniformity 
of machine-made fabrics appealed to 
them more than the individuality of 
hand-made. They did not appreci¬ 
ate art in wood and wool and plaster 
and stone because they were not fa¬ 
miliar with it. Eor most of them art 
began and ended with easel paintings, 
of which they bought inferior or pre¬ 
tended originals at prices that seemed 
to constitute them “patrons of art. ” 
In Europe also tapestry was not held at its true 
worth. Valuable pieces dating from the fifteenth 
and sixteenth centuries were stowed away in garrets 
or relegated to barns and stables. The number of 
tapestry weavers at the Gobelins descended as low 
as twenty-five and the number of yards produced in 
a year to twelve. At Aubusson the industry was in a 
bad way. Nowhere was there enthusiasm for the 
decorative fabric that excels* all others in beauty and 
lastingness. At that |time a museum of tapestries 
might have been bought for little. Ten thousand 
dollars could do as much as half a million now. 
For illustration of this, consult the catalogue of the 
Victoria and Albert Museum at South Kensington. 
A sixteenth century Flemish tapestry ten feet high 
by eight feet six inches wide was purchased in 
1866 for $120. Another similar tapestry ten feet by 
tw'elve feet nine inches, for $50. 
William Cowper Prime, first vice-president of the 
Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, was 
far in advance of his compatriots. Through his 
efforts a chair in the history of art was-established at 
Princeton College, his alma mater, to which in 1889 
he gave his important collection of ceramics. His 
“Pottery and Porcelain of all Times and Nations” 
w as published in 1877. He studied particularly the 
history of book illustration, and brought together 
a valuable collection of w'ood engravings of the fif¬ 
teenth and sixteenth centuries. About 1870 he 
purchased the five Alexander tapestries that form the 
subject of this article, and which his acquaintance 
with sixteenth century design rendered him peculiarly 
able to appreciate. These tapestries hung in the 
THE CORONATION OF ALEXANDER 
95 
