Let us return to our three legitimate decorations—our fan-painting, our screen-painting, and our embroideries.

Of Embroidery the world is full, and at its best estate. The foolish old German wool-worsted work has gone out, and in its place we have the very elaborate church needle-work of the Middle Ages, and, better still, its tapestry.

Some ingenious lady discovered that a plain piece of carpet made a very good background for a rich curtain, after a few stitches of embroidery were added; and it took but one step farther for another lady to find in cotton velvet a good background for tapestry. The figures are sketched on, and then the embroidery is artistically added, in the style of the thirteenth century, when the characters were outlined by a single line, which also designates the shape and folds of the garments. These outlines are filled in with masses of stitches in two or three shades of color. It is best, in making tapestry, to adhere to this simplicity, as in attempting the later richness of the Gobelins the work degenerates into a vulgar imitation.

And in stitching away at the tapestry frame, the well-read mamma might give her daughters a little sketch of the history of tapestry. How once these artistic draperies were the adornments of those stone castles which knew no plastered walls. How they caught the story of the “Iliad” and “Odyssey,” the scenes from the Bible, the whole story of mythology, the history of great wars. There hangs to-day, at Blenheim, a perfect set of pictures of the victories of the great Duke of Marlborough, done for him by the pious Belgian nuns.

But those works anterior to the sixteenth century have the greatest interest for the student of tapestry. Gold thread and silk were freely used in their embellishment, and the effect is rather that of a mosaic than of a picture. The greens are a study. They are produced with a dark blue for the dark, and a yellow for the light tints. The wonderful work of Matilda, called the Bayeux tapestry, wrought on brown linen; the many historical pieces found in Italy, done in wools; and the collections all over Europe, show a mastery over the needle which we have lost.

But it was left for Francis I, of France, to establish the most renowned factory for these beautiful things, when at Fontainebleau he founded what is now the Gobelins. The Gobelins were two Dutch dyers of wool, celebrated for their brilliant scarlets, who eventually gave their name to the art, and a “Gobelin” got to mean a tapestry. Under Louis XIV the Luxurious this manufactory attained to highest importance. They became the Herters and Marcottes of France. Colbert, the Prime Minister, united under one head all the different bands of workmen who were employed on furniture and decorations for the royal palaces of France. To the weavers of carpets and tapestry were added embroiderers, goldsmiths, wood-carvers, dyers, etc. Charles Lebrun and his pupils were charged with furnishing designs. Lebrun himself furnished over twenty-four hundred designs. In 1667 Louis himself paid a visit of state to the manufactory, accompanied by Colbert, and examined the magnificent carpets, tapestries, silver plate, and carvings which formed the splendid “Manufactory of Furniture to the Crown.” This great establishment, however, went down, as Louis lost money; and after the death of Lebrun (he was father to the wretched husband of pretty Madame Le Brun) it returned to its original function of producing tapestry. These Gobelin tapestries grew to be the most wonderful reproduction of pictures ever seen.

But why, one pauses to ask, try to reproduce a picture “done in oils” by the laborious process of needle-work or weaving? Why by process of mosaic? It is one of the useless fancies of the human race. The old tapestry, done by hand when there were no Gobelins, had a meaning and a use. So has the modern tapestry done by hand. It is cheap, it is individual, it is original; but for the Gobelins, that favorite luxury of kings, we fail to see an excuse. However, it is very beautiful, expensive, and rare.

The process of tapestry weaving is called the “haute lisse,” the warp being placed vertically, in contradistinction to the “basse lisse,” a work with a horizontal warp, as is usual. The weaver stands with the model which he is to copy behind him. As the surface of the tapestry must present a perfectly smooth and even surface, all cuttings must be made on the wrong side, for the workman never sees the beautiful work he is doing. This has been made use of in poetry in the following simile:

The Gobelins used gold, silver, pearls, and everything decorative in their work, at times, to produce effect. The first Revolution brought destruction to the Gobelins, as it did to everything else, and many choice pieces were burned. But it rose again under the first Napoleon, David furnishing designs. In 1871 the Communists again set fire to the manufactory, burning up the exhibition-room. Four hundred thousand dollars was the estimated loss. But when we remember that there perished tapestries of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, including the “Acts of the Apostles” by Raphael, and the now valuable, graceful, although affected, charming designs of Boucher, which were wrought for Pompadour, besides historical portraits and scenes, this seems a low estimate. The embroidery of the cartoons of Raphael, copies of which may be seen at Hampton Court, were among the greatest of the Gobelin triumphs.

However, to those who have walked the galleries of Florence, who have seen there the grand and beautiful specimens of embroidered tapestry of the sixteenth century, there will ever be a charm about old tapestry in the crude perspective and the sudden shading. It is this, perhaps, which can be copied. It is this to which the modern tapestry worker should address herself, if among the amusements of home she counts the making of curtains, and wall-coverings, and portiÈres, which shall almost suggest the possibility that they once hung in a Florentine or a Venetian palace. A dark background of some cheap woolen stuff, a knowledge of drawing, the silk and woolen and cotton and linen threads now brought to our hand so cheaply—will all furnish forth the appliances for the making of tapestry hangings, such as a castellan of the Middle Ages would not have despised.

Painting on fans has become a very common Home Amusement, and it is a very elegant one. The white silk fan is usually selected, although linen, satin, and wood fans are all easy and pleasant mediums. For painting on silk, some technical knowledge is necessary, some gum-water, or sizing, to prevent the paint from spreading. For painting on wood, one needs only the common water-color box, and a simple knowledge of drawing and painting. Flowers, birds, and butterflies are the favorite devices, monograms having gone out of fashion. It is better, if possible, to have the silk stretched on a frame before it is mounted on sticks, as one still sees the masterpieces of Boucher, Watteau, and Greuze, not yet mounted, but framed, in galleries—far too precious to mount, the Marchioness who ordered them having, perhaps, fortunately forgotten her caprice that we may admire it.

And what pretty and pleasing and altogether historical memories come in with the fan! It was created in primeval ages. The Egyptian ladies had them of lotus-leaves; the Greek and Roman ladies followed. The word flabellum occurs often in the Roman literature. They also had fans of peacock-feathers, and of some expansive material painted in brilliant colors. They were not made to open and shut like ours; that is a modern invention. They were stiff, with long handles, for ladies were fanned by their slaves. The flabellifer, or fan-bearer, was some young attendant, generally male, whose common business it was to carry his mistress’s fan. Would that were the fashion now! There is a Pompeian painting of Cupid as the fan-bearer of Ariadne, and lamenting her desertion by Theseus. In Queen Elizabeth’s day the fan was usually made of feathers, like the fan still used in the East. The handle was richly ornamented, and set with stones. A fashionable lady was never without her fan, which was chained to her girdle by a jeweled chain. A satirist of the day, Stephen Gosson, approves of the fan if used to drive away flies and for cooling the skin. He, however, continues scornfully:

Queen Elizabeth dropped a silver-handled fan into the moat at Amstead Hall, which occasioned many madrigals. Sir Francis Drake presented to his royal mistress a “fan of feathers, white and red, enameled with a half-moon of mother-of-pearl; within that a half-moon garnished with sparks of diamonds, and a few seed pearls on one side. Having her Majesty’s picture within it, and on the reverse a crow.” Why not try, young ladies, to paint a fan like this? Use silver dust to illustrate “sparks of diamonds.” It would be a very pretty conceit.

Poor Leicester gave, as his New Year’s gift, in 1574, “a fan of white feathers set in a handle of gold, garnished on one side with two very fair emeralds, and fully garnished with rubies and diamonds, and on each side a white bear (his cognizance), and two pearls hanging, a lion romping, with a white muzzled bear at his foot.” This fan would be difficult to copy. It was evidently a love-token from poor, ill-used Leicester to his haughty queen. Just before Christmas, in 1595, Elizabeth went to Kew, dined at my Lord Keeper’s house, and there was handed her a “fine fan, with a handle garnished with diamonds.”

Fans in Shakespeare’s time seem to have been composed of ostrich-feathers, and so on, stuck into handles. In “Love and Honor,” by Sir William Davenant, we find the line,

“All your plate, Vasco, is the silver handle of your old prisoner’s fan.”

Marston says:

Forty pounds were often given for a fan in Elizabeth’s time. Bishop Hall, in his “Satires,” in 1597, says:

The fan of the Countess of Suffolk resembles a powder-puff.

But gentlemen carried fans in those days. We find in a manuscript in the Ashmolean Museum, at Oxford, the following allusion: “The gentlemen then had prodigious fans, as is to be seen in old pictures, like that instrument which is used to dry feathers, and it had a handle at least one half as long, with which their daughters oftentimes were corrected. Sir Edward Cole, Lord Chief Justice, rode the circuit with such a fan, and William Dugdale told me he was witness of it.” The Earl of Manchester also used such a fan. “But the fathers and mothers slasht their daughters, in the time of their besom-discipline, when they were perfect women.” Both fashions have happily passed away. Lords Chief Justices no longer “slash” their daughters, nor do they carry fans.

Of Catharine de Braganza (1664) we read that she and her maids walked from Whitehall in procession to St. James’s Palace through the park in glittering costume of silver lace in the bright morning sunshine. Parasols being unknown in England at that era, the courtly belles used the gigantic green shading-fans, which had been introduced by the Queen and her Portuguese ladies, to shield their complexions from the sun, when they did not wish wholly to obscure their charms by putting on their masks. Both were in general use in this reign. The green shading-fan is of Moorish origin, and for more than a century after the marriage of Catharine of Braganza was considered an indispensable luxury by our fair and stately ancestral dames, who used them in open carriages, in the promenade, and at prayers, where they ostentatiously screened their devotions from public view by spreading them before their faces while they knelt.

But China and Japan—the home of fans—are waiting to be let in! and as soon as the India trade was opened by Catharine’s marriage treaty, there entered the carved ivory fan, the light bamboo and palm-leaf, the paper fan, the silk folding fan, mounted on beautiful Japanese sticks; all came to England about this time.

The vellum fans of France, on which Watteau first painted his shepherdesses in hoop-petticoats, and swains in full-bottomed wigs, the choice impossible goddesses of Boucher, with cupids and nymphs, all came next. The history of fans, in France alone, would fill a volume; and the neighboring kingdom of Spain, where the language of fans has become a very serious study, would give us another volume. The fans of tortoise-shell, enriched with jewels, are a favorite luxury of to-day. Oliver Wendell Holmes has written a delightful poem on the “Origin of the Fan.” In all our art loan collections there is, nowadays, an exhibition of fans. The young student of fan-painting should strive to see some of those of Watteau and of Boucher. Tiffany to-day turns out some very beautiful specimens; and more than one of our artists could admirably paint a fan or two as his contribution to Fan History.

Nothing can be prettier as a Home Amusement than fan-painting, into which much, but not too much, Japanese suggestion should creep. Remember, young ladies, the plea of that poor stork, of which we have seen so much, “that he be allowed to put down his other leg!” and spare us the gilded bird, or give him to us but seldom.

The art of Illumination, which is now studied occasionally by our young ladies, goes wonderfully well into fan-painting. Perhaps it is too good for it. Perhaps the same hand which can copy the old initial letter which makes the missals rich and rare, should not condescend to the application of the same delicate manipulation in order to ornament a fan. But a fan of vellum, painted by an illuminator, is still a very beautiful thing.

A fan painted to illustrate a song or a ballad is a very pretty thing. The common linen fan, on which a clever hand draws with pencil or ink the story of “Mary, Mary, quite contrary,” becomes a precious possession. And in these days of Kate Greenaways and Rosina Emmets we ought to have many charming fan decorators. We should not object if they selected the old-fashioned maniÉrÉ goddesses, hovering cupids, smiling nymphs, and posÉ infants of Boucher, if they would give us his cool, pearly grays, and sweet, soft rose tints. We have had enough of realism and ugliness, disagreeable cat-tails, and harsh, dirty Joan of Arcs. Let us have a little beauty by way of a change, at least on our fans. Perhaps we could “live up to it.”

Nor should we fail to note the pleasant possibility of all the dinner-cards of a winter coming fresh from the hands of the young ladies of the family. What infinite suggestion does one glimpse of the garden on a June morning give to the fair artist! We can imagine that some poetical member should thus summon and direct her sister and brother artists in the following manner:

“Do give me, Rosamond, that spray of sweet-brier which has caught a bit of spider-web over its sweetest pink bud. Throw in that green dragon-fly who is about to dart through the spider’s web. Give me, Grace, that morning-glory cup with a yellow butterfly floating over it. It will shame the best Venetian glass of Mrs. Croesus.

“You, Jane, paint me those dandelions, strewed by some millionaire who is tired of his gold. You, Constance, take this volume of the old poets, and hunt up appropriate mottoes to write under these fancies from Nature. They shall illuminate our dinners of next winter, and breathe the breath of Nature through our stiff conventionality. They shall be our visitors from Titania.

“Yes, a happy thought! You, Mary, who are so akin to the fairies, give us your kindred. Paint me Oberon and Queen Mab giving a banquet in yon lily. What a splendid and baronial apartment! How the golden shower falls on their royal heads from those laden stamens! True courtiers they, who never stop flattering. Suggest, if you can, with your brush, the perfume of luxury which is born and bred in this royal pavilion. Show me their delicate guests. Here comes the Butterfly, most repandu of beaus; and the Humming-bird, rich bachelor (hard to catch), who dashes in for a look at the beauties, and away again—you can put him in; he is a type for a dinner-card.

“And you, Paul, who are of a strong, masculine, satirical turn, shall make all these frogs and toads into guests in another set of dinner-cards. Give me the frog as an Ambassador. I like his pouting throat, his puffy air—it so simulates importance. How grand and disdainful he is! I declare, he looks so like old Mr. ——! But do not make a portrait; that would give offense. These toads are just about as lively and as brilliant as the rank and file of diners-out. Put them all in Worth dresses. Make the dishes on the table after Hawthorne’s delicate fancy, the shapes of summer vegetables—squashes, cucumbers, pea-pods. What is that pretty poem I remember about Pods?

“Yes,” said Mary, “pods are very pretty.”

Well, we have, perhaps, talked nonsense enough about the dinner-cards. It is a pretty Home Amusement for the back piazza in summer, or for the close and guarded warm home parlor of winter. Give us the results of both, young ladies. And since all the wealthy chromo people are offering such splendid sums for the Christmas, Easter, and even advertising cards, why should not every group try their hand at the—perhaps—thousand dollar prize?

Here is a suggestion for a Christmas card: A group of young pagans going out of the Catacombs are represented as strewing flowers and singing gay songs. On the other side a group of austere early Christians are coming in, singing hymns. Between the two a ray of light comes down through a fissure of the roof and forms a cross. The religion that is going out, the religion that is coming in—the cross is between them. How much a clever hand could make of this moment of time, so replete with interest to all the world!

It would seem as if, with all the suggestions of Easter, that no one would need anything but a paint-box and a pack of blank cards to interest them at this season. We should have the World being hatched out of an egg; the Saxon goddess Eastre; the Legend of the Stork; the German children searching for the Nest in the garden where the Easter-hen had laid her egg; the great Sunburst; the Sun dancing on Easter morning; the games of mediÆval England, when the women played ball at one end of the town and the men at the other, and one fine couple taking occasion to run away to get married on the sly. The Easter Egg is full of meat for the artist.

Growing out of these thoughts comes up the great and increasing taste for symbolism, which finds its highest exponent in church embroidery. The Catholic Church has ever been a good customer of the decorative art schools. It needs and consumes or uses much embroidery. But the pious women of Protestant communion now also deem it a duty and a pleasure to decorate the altars of their beloved churches with much that is symbolic and beautiful, and it is a favorite form of Home Amusement to create an altar-cloth or some draperies which shall engross an hour or two a day of the time of the best embroideresses in the family.