40 
House & 
Garden 
THE PLACE FOR TAPESTRIES 
From the History of These Hangings Can Be Learned Their Proper Use in American 
Homes Today—The Old Makers and the Modern 
PEYTON BOSWELL 
T he use of 
tapestries a s 
decorations in 
America is com¬ 
paratively new. Un¬ 
til the present gen¬ 
eration few of them 
were brought to this 
country. The feeling 
still persists that 
they are fit to adoni 
palaces and great 
chambers of state 
and have no place 
in the homes of peo¬ 
ple on this side of 
the ocean; in other 
words, that, so far 
as this country is 
concerned, they are 
nice to read about 
and see depicted in 
books and prints — 
fine settings for his- 
ton- and poetry— 
but something be¬ 
yond all practical 
use. 
Tapestry Chronicles 
hi a modern hallway with 
Italian spirit the tapestry 
forms a background for 
furniture. J. B. Holl- 
zelon Co., decorators 
Certainly, 
have filled an im- 
p o r t a n t place in 
chronicle and leg¬ 
end. Penelope, that 
most devoted house¬ 
wife of H o m e r ’ s 
world, passed her 
time of near-widowhood, waiting for the re¬ 
turn of Ulysses from the Trojan wars, weaving 
tapestries. Not only have we Homer’s word 
for this, but there still exists a Greek vase 
dating back to the fifth century before Christ 
which has her pictured in front of a tapestry'- 
weaving frame, at one side of which stands 
her son, Telemachus, who has interrupted her 
labors by his own return from the quest of his 
father. This picture reveals the interesting 
fact that tapestries were 
made in those legendary 
times in substantially the 
same way that they are 
made today. 
Not only did the old 
Romans and Greeks weave 
tapestries to cover their 
walls, but the early 
Scandinavians likewise 
produced them. Shake¬ 
speare, prone as he was to 
commit anachronisms—as 
when he put clocks and 
chimneys in ancient Rome 
—did not fall into a like 
fault when he had the 
Prince of Denmark thrust 
his sword through a tap¬ 
estry and immolate poor 
old e a V e s-d r o p p i n g 
I'olonius on the other side 
of it. 
Tapestry weaving has found a renaissance in America. The artists follow medieval 
designs and spirit. This example, in the Gothic style, was woven by the Herter Looms 
Old and Modern Values 
All this, of course, 
sounds very remote to the 
ordinary man with the 
ordinary home. These 
magnificent specimens 
may as well have stayed 
in story books, so far as 
he is concerned. But these 
great acquisitions provide 
only the pinnacle of in¬ 
terest, and it is no more 
difficult to obtain a worthy 
example of tapestry' for 
one’s home than it is to 
provide a good painting 
or a desirable piece of 
statuary. The royal 
Gobelins and Aubusson 
specimens are in the world 
of textiles what Rem¬ 
brandts and Titians are 
(Left) A nth Century 
Flemish verdure tapestry 
suitable for a modern 
room. Courtesy of H. 
Koopman & Son 
Poe dreamed and 
mote of tapestried 
chambers in old cas¬ 
tles, of ghostly 
zephyrs from the 
land of the dead 
that swayed their 
ancient folds as if 
shaken by unseen 
hands; and that is 
about as close as any 
American up to the 
last few years ever 
really got to a tap¬ 
estry unless he went 
to Europe. 
But now America’s 
palatial homes have 
hundreds of the 
finest specimens of 
Europe’s golden age 
of tapestry weaving. 
One of them alone, 
the famous Mazarin 
tapestry from the 
J. Pierpont Morgan 
collection, now the 
property of Joseph 
E. W i d e n e r , of 
Philadelphia, is 
valued at half a 
million dollars, and 
scores of individual 
pieces and even 
whole sets that were 
woven in the 17th 
and 18th centuries 
for kings, princes, 
ministers and cardinals, now adorn the walls 
of our millionaire collectors. Rooms in their 
mansions have been reconstructed even, in 
order to provide suitable hanging space, and 
furniture and other objects of the same period 
have been purchased at very high prices to 
provide the proper atmosphere and create an 
appropriate ensemble. Obviously, then, there 
is no lack of proof of the importance which 
attaches to genuine tapestries. 
