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Updated: June 15, 2025
The tablet omits the date that is fixed in our mind as that of the beginning of the modern tapestry industry in France, the year 1662, but that is only because it deals with a date of more general importance, the time when the Gobelins was made a manufactory of all sorts of gracious products for the luxury of palaces and châteaux, not tapestries alone, but superb furniture, and metal work, inlay, mounting of porcelains and all that goes to furnish the home of fortunate men.
This practice stopped in later years, and is not seen at all in the softer methods of the Gobelins. The materials of tapestries we know to be invariably wool, silk and metal threads, yet the weaving of these varies with the talent of the craftsman.
It was a celebrated bonfire that was built in the courtyard of the Gobelins when, by order of the Committee on Selection, all things offensive to an over-sensitive republican irritability were heaped for the holocaust.
It was used chiefly, like Gobelins Tapestry, to make very costly presents, otherwise unprocurable, for grandees and crowned heads. For a long time the work was a Royal monopoly. There are several interesting examples in the Pitti Palace, in this case in the form of tables. Flowers, fruits, shells, and even figures and landscapes have been represented in this manner.
The celebrated Gobelins tapestry factory was also established; and it was here the King collected together and suitably housed the different skilled producers of his furniture, placing them all under the control of his favourite artist, Lebrun, who was appointed director in 1667.
These were men who held the purse-strings of the state, and could thereby foster or crush a state institution, but the direction of the Gobelins itself, as a factory, was in the hands of architects, beginning with the able De Cotte. As the factory had many ateliers, these were each directed by painters, among whom appear such interesting men of talent as Oudry, Boucher, Hallé.
The brocaded panels of the Salle du Trône were objects of much remark among the ladies, as were the tapestries of the Salle des Gobelins; but the bareness and total absence of furniture were commented on freely on all sides.
Several students were arranged with great silence and decorum, at long tables. In one apartment is a very large, and ingenious model of Rome in a glass case, and another of a frigate. Upon leaving the library I proceeded to the Gobelins, so called from one Gobel, a noted dyer at Rheims, who settled here in the reign of Francis I. This beautiful manufactory has a crowd of visitors every day.
The models allowed in this benumbing period were those of hunting scenes, and antique groups such as the Muses, or scenes from the life of Achilles. A vicious system of pay was added to the vicious system of art restriction. And so fell the Gobelins, to revive in such small manner as was accorded it in the Nineteenth Century. Its great work was done.
The warp comes to the factory all in big hanks of even thread. Nowadays it is usually of cotton, although they contend at the Gobelins that wool warp is preferable, for it gives the finished fabric a lightness and flexibility that the heavier, stiffer cotton destroys.
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