Aubusson Tapestries 
By GEORGE EELAND HUNTER 
PART II 
{Continued from the November Issued) 
A fter the conquest by the Romans, Aubusson 
became a military station and a fortress of the 
^ second order. In the middle ages, the castle 
ol the House of Aubusson took the place of the 
fortress. Of the castle few traces are left. 
In the year 418 A. D. the land of the Lemovices, 
that in four and a half centuries had become more 
Roman than Rome itself, was granted by the Roman 
Emperor Honorius to the invading Visigoths—bar¬ 
barians from the forests of Germany and Russia—as 
their “mark.” Hence its Latin name Marchia 
Lemovicina that in French became La Marche. 
Auvergne got its name from the Arverni, and in the 
seventeenth century Aubusson tapestries were often 
called tapisseries d’Auvergne, while tapestries made 
in Felletin were called tapisseries de La Marche. 
The modern name for the political division in which 
both towns are situated is the Department de la 
Creuse, named from the river that flows through 
Aubusson, which is said to possess, like the Bievre of 
the Gobelins, and the Bronx of the Baumgarten 
atelier at Williamsbridge, certain mysterious quali¬ 
ties that endear its water to the dyers of silk and 
wool. 
The first definite documentary evidence that has yet 
been discovered of 
tapestries woven in 
the Aubusson dis¬ 
trict is in the will 
dated 1507 of the 
Duchess of Valen- 
tinois, who had the 
somewhat doubtful 
distinction of being 
the widow of the 
notorious Caesar 
Borgia. In the will 
are enumerated 
numerous tapestries 
from the looms of 
Felletin, mostly 
verdures, several of 
them being de¬ 
scribed as tappi- 
cerie de Felletin a 
feuillages. 
In the year 1581 
an ordinance of 
Henri III. speaks of 
tapestries from 
Felletin and Aubusson as tappisserie ou tapis dit 
Feletin, d’Auvergne. 
In 1601 Henri IV. encouraged the industry greatly 
by forbidding the importation of Flemish tapestries 
into France. It will be remembered that it was he 
who brought Flemish weavers to Paris and installed 
them at the Gobelins. This atelier founded hy 
Henri IV. was one of several united by Colbert in 
1667 in the reign of Louis XIV. to form the “Furni¬ 
ture Factory of the Crown,” which is the lineal 
ancestor of the present Gobelins. But the Parisians 
were not content to share prosperity with Aubusson. 
They wanted a monopoly of the Paris market. They 
wanted to tax the Aubusson tapestries on entry to 
Paris, and to allow them to remain there on exhibition 
only a fortnight. Evidently they feared the com¬ 
petition of the hardy mountaineers of Auvergne and 
La Marche. Fortunately the Government did not 
share their local selfishness, and a royal decree dated 
February i, 1620, confirmed Aubusson and Felletin 
in their rights. 
An indication of the high quality of the work being 
done at Aubusson in the first part of the seventeenth 
century is the fact that in 1625 a tapestry merchant of 
Aubusson received an order to supply the cathedral 
of Reims with four 
figure tapestries on 
religious subjects— 
the Assumption, the 
Virgin with the in¬ 
fant Christ, St. Ni- 
caise, and St. Remi. 
Cont e mpora r y 
evidence about tap¬ 
estry weaving at 
Aubusson in the 
seventeenth century 
is also to be found in 
the article on the 
Haute Lisse in 
Savary’s Diction- 
naire du Commerce 
published in 1641. 
He says: “There 
are also two other 
French tapestry fac¬ 
tories, one at Aubus- 
son in Auvergne 
and the other 
at Felletin in La 
Louis XV. Aubusson sofa coverings. Design of the eighteenth century 
