82 
House & Garden 
The Modern Light 
and Power 
T he charm of your country home 
can be immeasurably augmented 
by the installation of modern electric 
lights. ^The Fairbanks-Morse “F” 
plant gives an abundance of steady, 
dependable light with minimum at¬ 
tention for care or repairs. ^The 
plant is extremely simple to operate 
—just touch a button to start and 
another to stop. ^The famous “Z” 
engine, which is part of the plant, 
can also be used independently of the 
dynamo to pump water or do other 
work. ^Your dealer will be glad 
to explain all the details—which in- 
eludes exclusive Fairbanks-Morse 
“F” plant features. 
The "F” Light Plant may also 
be obtained in larger sizes. 
The Place for Tapestries 
{Continued from page 80) 
dyers of the yarns, but with the change 
to realism and the necessity of repro- 
[ ducing elaborate paintings came the em¬ 
ployment of an amazing number of 
hues and tones. The great Gobelins 
looms in France are said officially to 
have used as many as 14,400 tones. 
Tapestry weaving gradually left the 
medieval castle and came to centers in 
the cities. During the 14th and ISth 
Centuries Arras was the great center, 
and the name of the town actually came 
to be synonymous with tapestry, and 
“arras” became the generic name for 
wall hangings. Then followed Brussels, 
Middelburg, Delft, Mortlake in Eng¬ 
land, and Paris. 
The most illustrious names in the 
Renaissance, which reached its zenith 
in the 17th and 18th Centuries under 
I royal patronage in France, are the 
Gobelins, the Beauvais and the Aubusson 
looms. The Gobelins establishment, 
founded by Colbert in 1667, produced 
under the direction of Charles Le Brun 
magnificent works glorifying Louis XIV, 
i from cartoons by Le Brun himself. The 
Conquests of Alexander, which were in¬ 
tended to flatter the Grand Monarch, 
were done many times. Tapestries were 
woven after designs by the greatest 
painters of the age, among them Pous¬ 
sin, Mignard and Coypel, the latter’s 
work extending welt into the 18th Cen¬ 
tury under Louis XV. 
Under the latter monarch Beauvais 
I came into prominence, with its delicately 
j colored creations after the exquisite 
Boucher. These looms, under the direc¬ 
tion of Oudry, soon rivalled the royal 
plant of the Gobelins. And as for 
.4ubusson, tradition says the first tap¬ 
estries were made there in 732 by strag¬ 
glers from the Saracen army that 
j Charles Martel defeated at Tours. They 
I are still being made there, as well as at 
Beauvais and at the Gobelins plant in 
Paris. 
Besides these three ancient centers 
that continued to produce, perhaps the 
most notable IQth Century experiment 
was Merton Abbey in England, where 
tapestries were woven, beginning with 
1878, after designs by William Morris, 
Sir Edward Burne-Jones and Walter 
Crane. 
Albert Herter, who has taken the lead 
in tapestry designing in the United 
States, is at his best when depicting 
stories from American history. “As in 
the bygone days of romance,” says Mr. 
Herter, “the life and history of each 
nation, court or family was woven into 
an enduring fabric, so also we can by 
real art make beautiful and interesting 
the happenings of what seeems to us 
a common place and sadly unpic- 
turesque time.” 
Tapestries in Period Rooms 
Tapestries can be used in any period 
room. Gothic specimens are particu¬ 
larly appropriate for old English in¬ 
teriors, with which they may be said 
to be indigenous, for when the old 
English home was being evolved from 
a fortress into a mansion these tap¬ 
estries, from Arras and other early con¬ 
tinental weaving centers, were more 
highly prized as decorations by the 
English nobility than any other form 
of art. Henry VHI possessed hundreds 
of them, and the English castles of the 
14th, ISth, 16th and 17th Centuries 
were filled with them. 
Likewise, French rooms of the 
periods of Louis XIV, Louis XV and 
Louis XVI, are the natural quarters of 
the finely pictorial and richly colored 
tapestries of the Renaissance, from the 
Gobelins, Beauvais, Aubusson and Brus¬ 
sels looms. There is a vivacious quality 
about these works, even those that, 
under Louis XIV, were given scriptural 
subjects, that harmonizes with French 
furniture. Italian rooms likewise need 
tapestries, usually the more ornate ones. 
The only sort of room in which it is 
difficult to make a tapestry appear at 
home is the Colonial room, but there 
are certain kinds, such as the Flemish 
verdure specimens, and the lighter keyed 
and simpler French tapestries, that can 
be used with good effect. 
In considering tapestries as decora¬ 
tions it must be constantly borne in 
mind that their real value lies in the 
quality of their texture and design, and 
not simply in the realism of their pic¬ 
torial phase. Not tapestries which most 
resemble paintings, but those which are 
the most unlike them have the highest 
decorative value. In this they are akin 
to the Oriental rug. One would not 
think of buying a rug because it repre¬ 
sented something or other, but rather 
because of its intrinsic beauty of texture 
and color and design. It has been said 
that tapestries have greater textural in¬ 
terest than any other art product- 
Hanging Tapestries 
Now it is because of this that tap¬ 
estries have to be hung loosely on walls 
instead of being stretched tautly on 
frames and displayed as paintings are. 
It is only by letting them hang free 
that their textural qualities can be en¬ 
joyed. The lights and shadows that 
play about the natural folds and puckers 
are part of the charm. Besides, nearly 
all tapestries have borders woven about 
them, which take the place of frames; 
and when this is the case to put a 
wooden bound to their beauty would be 
worse than carrying coals to Newcastle: 
it would be as bad as serving honey in 
molasses. Perhaps the worst humiliation 
that can be heaped upon a tapestry is 
to have its owner not only frame it 
but put it behind glass. 
And in this connection it may be 
added that when tapestries were least 
valued, in the mechanical dullness of 
the first part of the 19th Century, our 
great grandmothers actually stretched 
their dresses over hoop-like frames be¬ 
fore draping their persons with them. 
How happy the age that has learned to 
wonder how it ever could have been 
possible for people to admire hoop- 
skirts and despise tapestries! 
