Large quantities of strong-colour verdures from La Marche and notably from Aubusson are offered to the buyer throughout France. They are as easily adapted to the wood panels of a modern dining-room as is stuff by the yard, the pattern being merely a mass of trees divisible almost anywhere. The colour scheme is often worked out in blues instead of greens; a narrow border is on undisturbed pieces, and the reverse of the tapestry is as full of loose threads as the back of a cashmere rug. For the most part these fragments are the work of the Eighteenth Century. Older ones, with warmer colours introduced bring much higher prices.
Those who hold by the letter, leave out the velvety product of La Savonnerie from the aristocratic society of hangings woven in the classic stitch of the Gobelins. They have reason. Yet, because the weave is one we often see in galleries, also on furniture both old and new, it is as well not to ignore its productions in lofty silence.
Besides, it is rather interesting, this little branch of an exotic industry that tried to run along beside the greater and more artistic. It never has tried to be much higher than a man's feet, has been content for the most part to soften and brighten floors that before its coming were left in the cold bareness of tile or parquet. It crept up to the backs and seats of chairs, and into panelled screens a little later on, but never has it had much vogue on the walls.
When we go back to its beginnings we come flat against the Far East, as is usual. The history of the fabric which is woven with a pile like that of heavy wool velvet, and which is called Savonnerie, runs parallel to the long story of tapestry proper, but to make its scant details one short concrete chronicle it is best to put them all together.
From the East, then, came the idea of weaving in that style of which only the people of the East were masters. Oriental rugs as such were not attempted in either colour or design, but one of the rug stitches was copied.
We have to run back to the time of Henri IV, a pleasing time to turn to with its demonstration of how much a powerful king loved the welfare of his people. When he interested himself in tapestry, one of the three important existing factories was stationed in the Louvre. This was primarily for the hangings properly called tapestry, but in the same place were looms for the production of work "after the fashion of Turkey." Sometimes it was called work of "long wool" (_longue laine_) and sometimes also "_a la façon de Perse, ou du Levant_," as well as "of the fashion of Turkey,"--all names giving credit to the East from whence the stitch came by means of crusades, invasions and other storied movements of the people of a dim past.