File:American homes and gardens (1912) (17967079749).jpg

Title: American homes and gardens
Identifier: americanhomesgar91912newy (find matches)
Year: 1905 (1900s)
Authors:
Subjects: Architecture, Domestic; Landscape gardening
Publisher: New York : Munn and Co
Contributing Library: Smithsonian Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library

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These two illustrations show the front and the back of an Aubusson chair back, woven in silk and wool. Note the irregularity of the floating threads, which if removed would disclose the same design, reversed, that appears on the right side of this tapestry. A genuine example of this sort with back to match would cost $400 they are worth. Out of twenty large tapestries the writer recently examined in an auction-room, seventeen had never been especially good, while the other three were so badly repaired as hardly to merit house room. Herein lies a lesson that the amateur of tapestries should take to heart. Mere age counts for little. The value of an inferior work of art does not increase as the generations pass, although the price paid by ignoramuses sometimes does. It is the tapestry, or rug, or chair, or table, that artistically excels which multiplies in value more rapidly than the interest on money, and at last is enshrined in the palace of a collector, in the museum of a great city or nation. The only museum in the United States that contains a collection of fine tapestries to an extent worth considering is the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Com- pared with the forty splendid pieces now displayed on its walls, the collections of the Boston and Chicago art mu- seums—as well as of the Metropolitan Museum itself five years ago—are insignificant. The collection of books on tapestry in the library of the Metropolitan Museum is also large and important. The prize tapestry in the Metropolitan collection is one in the Gothic style, lent by Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan and called the Mazarin tapestry, because tradition says that it once belonged to the famous French Cardinal who chast- ened the youthful haughtiness of Louis XIV. The subject of this tapestry, which is partitioned after the fashion of a three-fold screen, with Gothic columns between the leaves, is "Christ Proclaiming the New Dispensation." The Christ is seated on a throne in the upper part of the middle panel, with angels on each side of Him, one bearing a long branch with lilies, symbolic of the Church; the other a sword, sym- bolic of the State. Below are two groups of worshippers, the Church group headed by the Pope and the State group by the Emperor. A figure representing the Synagogue of the Old Dispensation appears on the right, blinded, with broken sceptre and shattered tablets of the Mosaic law, while the State of the New Dispensation is represented by the Persian King Ahasuerus (Xerxes) and Esther. A figure representing the Holy Catholic Church of the New Dispensation appears on the left with crozier and chalice, while the State of the New Dispensation is represented by Emperor Augustus, to whom the Tiburtine Sibyl announces the coming of the Messiah. Technically, this is one of the most wonderful, perhaps the most wonderful, tapestry ever woven. Certainly the flesh tones of faces and hands and of the tiny nude figures of Adam and Eve, and the silver tones of hair and beards, and the gold and jewels of the costumes are marvelously expressed. Almost in the same class as regards excellence of weave are two Renaissance tapestries illustrating the "Story of Herse," lent by Mr. George Blumenthal. They were woven in Brussels by Willem van Pannemaker, whose woven sig- nature, together with the Brussels monogram, appears in the border. The borders are rich with gold in basket weave, and the one of the two tapestries that show the "Bridal Chamber of Herse" is almost equal to the great Gothic tapestries as regards the suitability of the design for inter- pretation on the loom. Tapestries like these, however, are beyond the reach, even at present prices, of all but the greatest collectors, and therefore the writer would call at- tention to other tapestries, excellent duplicates of which can be bought or reproduced at prices that make them available more generally for adorning the home. At this point I should like to remark that the nouveau riche dog-in-the- manger spirit which locks up many famous paintings in

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