80 
House & Garden 
This Home Made Fire 
Safe With Metal Lath 
HE owner wanted fire protection, as 
well as a handsome, commodions home. 
His architect, therefore, specified 
KNO-BURN METAL LATH, as a 
base for all plastering. 
The Metal Lath put an nnhurnahle “heart of 
steel” in each partition and ceiling. Every wall 
and ceiling became a veritable Fire Stop. And 
the additional cost was so moderate. 
Metal 
^no-^urn 
Lath 
prevents stucco or interior plastering from falling 
or discoloring. It also keeps it from streaking 
and cracking. Ask yonr architect to tell you of 
its other advantages. 
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Note the “heart of steel” in 
this stucco-me^al lath wall. 
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Exp anded Metal Co. 
I 937 Old Colony Bldg. | 
CHICAGO 
“The Marriage of Angelica and Medor”, a Royal Gobelins 
tapestry after a cartoon by Charles Coypel painted in 1733. 
Courtesy of Duveen Brothers 
The Place for Tapestries 
{Continued from page 41) 
ies on the Apocalypse at the cathedral of 
Anger, made over into blankets for 
horses. England suffered as well as 
France, an instance being the cutting 
up into draperies of the magnificent 
Gothic Hunting Tapestries at Hard- 
wicke Hall. 
It was the French Revolution that 
started the vandalism. In 1793, at the 
order of the Assembly, a great number 
of beautiful tapestries that sinned be¬ 
cause they bore emblems of the nobility 
were burned with zealous formality at 
the foot of the Tree of Liberty. Others 
were sold by the State for a pittance 
and were cut up for various domestic 
and industrial uses. Four years later 
the Directory, still having on its hands 
a lot of tapestries from the palaces of 
the king and nobles, and being unable 
to sell them with profit, decided it 
would be better to burn those that 
were woven with gold and silver. Ac¬ 
cordingly 190 of the most magnificent 
tapestries ever woven were consigned 
to the flames. In the ashes were found 
$13,000 worth of metal! 
Even as late as 1850 tapestries could 
be bought for one-fiftieth part of their 
cost now. Since no one desired tap¬ 
estries, it is no matter of wonder that 
the making of them almost ceased. Yet 
despite this eclipse, the famous Gobelins 
and Aubusson works in France sur¬ 
vived, and kept their technical methods 
and traditions intact, and today are 
weaving tapestries of a quality too ex¬ 
quisite and refined to be great. The 
famous looms are in the grip of a sort 
of academicism that strangles inspira¬ 
tion. 
Pre-Renaissance Designs 
Simply as works of art, leaving out 
the element of grandeur, the finest tap¬ 
estries were produced before the Renais¬ 
sance, and, no matter whether woven 
in France, Burgundy, Italy, Spain, 
Germany or England, have come to be 
known by the general appellation of 
“Gothic”. Texture and design counted 
for more than fine pictorial gradations, 
and this was as it should be. When 
tapestry weaving began to usurp the 
place of the painter it lost in these 
primitive and fundamental qualities 
even though it gained in grandiloquence 
and magnificence. It is worthy of note 
here that the new American looms hare 
gone back to the middle ages for their 
technique and inspiration. 
In medieval times tapestries were 
woven mainly in the seigniorial castles 
by the women under the personal direc¬ 
tion of the wife of the lord. They were 
not woven for pastime alone, or in the 
quest of beauty, but as matters of 
necessity. The feudal castle for warmth 
and comfort was little better than the 
out of doors. The great chambers in 
winter were bitter cold, and were 
traversed by cruel draughts. Not only 
were wall hangings necessary for the 
sake of comfort, but it was also neces¬ 
sary to interpose in the great spaces 
barriers and lanes of textiles, so ar¬ 
ranged as to hedge in the heat obtained 
from the fires. And just as it devolved 
on the pioneer mothers of America to 
weave blankets and fashion padded 
quilts for the family’s comfort, so it 
devolved on the women of the medieval 
castle to provide the textiles that were 
used literally to “clothe the house”. 
It was the age of romance. In her 
high tower the lady of the castle waited 
for the return of her lord from the ser¬ 
vice of the king, and her attendants, too, 
pined for the presence of their husbands 
and sweethearts, the knights who trav¬ 
elled in his train and fought at his side. 
Bending over the low frames they wove 
into their tapestries the loves, and joys, 
and longings and heart-breaks of 
medieval life. The quaintly designed 
pictures make the best and truest record 
of the inner life of those times that has 
survived in literature or in art. 
It was a time when story telling was 
by word of mouth and learning was 
confined to the few. Imagination was 
spurred by the tales told by the tap¬ 
estries, and the change of scene wrought 
by the servants who folded up one set 
and spread upon the hangings another 
was greatly relished. On one day the 
seignior and his guests might dine amid 
a hunting scene; the next it might be in 
view of the wars of old Judea, and 
maybe on the third amidst the heroic 
and legendary exploits of the Greeks 
and the Trojans. Thus the tapestries 
helped to keep alive the culture of the 
ancient world. So greatly was this pic¬ 
torial element prized that one of the 
most cherished gifts one feudal ruler 
could make to another would be a set 
of tapestries, and they were often lent 
from one castle to another for the 
pleasure of the hemmed-in occupants. 
The designs of the Gothic tapestries, 
when not original, were usually taken 
from the illuminated manuscripts of the 
times, particularly the “Horae”, or 
Books of Hours, those caligraphic alma¬ 
nacs and works of religious devotion 
now so highly prized by collectors. 
Hence they reflected the purity of de¬ 
sign of the primitive painters. 
Raphael’s Cartoons 
The great change was ushered in by 
Raphael, master of realism and material 
beauty, who produced the cartoons for 
the famous Acts of the Apostles for 
Pope Lee X. In the earlier tapestries 
a dozen or so colors had sufficed the 
{Continued on page 82) 
