The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1919-08-25
TAPESTRY ART
 ORIGINATED IN ARRAS, FLANDERS Was First Made Known in England By Wm. Shel-
 don, in 1920.
TAPESTRY WEAVING
 KNOWN TO ANCIENTS
Were So Costly Only Kings Could Own
 Them.

Arras :n Flanders has repeated it. i self. History is the most absurd re- | peater.. It is a watch thac always | goes back and does the same inane 1 thing. Will mankind ever learn? | Today we celebrate Arras, in Elan | ders, and its historical tapestries, Ar ras drenched in blood in 1854, Arras blind with blood in the year 1914- 1918, of the Great War.
 We celebrate today, August 25, the anniversary of a date at Arras, 1851, when the Spaniards were defeated and rolled out of the Dutch Neither lands and out of Flanders by the Great French Marshal Turenne ItI was the Second War of Conquest of Holland and of Great and brilliant Flanders. It is a name to conjure with, this "Arras." And not because of it's sanguinary interest, nor it's martial renown in the stormy cen turies. And not because of the mag nificent record from 1914 to 1918 Of the stubborn British bulldog and of the French leopard, holding on with their teeth to dripping edges of blood, while thirty thousand of their offspring fell per day at Arras, as the bulldog and the leopard block ed by William Sheldon. He established Hun to the English Channel.
 Around Arras circles forever the charm of pure beauty and stately majesty, although today the place it. self is a dismal wreck. That beauty and the charm of Arras lay in the one word Tapestry"
 The first tapestries in Europe were made by Flemings, and made in Ar ras. Indeed, so noted were the weaves of Arras that the word itself became a synonym for "Tapestry.'' Shakespeare uses this in Hamlet, as when, Hamlet stabs PoIonius behind the Arras"-meaning the great cur tain, or Tapestry, hung in royal apartments.
 The art of Tapestry-m was first introduced into England in 1920, the year of the sailing of the May flower from Plymouth, and introduce ed by William Sheldon. e established looms at Mortlake. Now, Tapestry is the art of painting by the weaving of colored threads intertwined on lines stretched vertically Chigh-warp Tapestry or horizontally Oow-warp) which become a web, combining lines and tones.
 The skilful Tapestry weaver is himself an artist; he interprets and he creates designs, called cartoons, which are the soul of his work. Tap try-weaving was known to the an- clients, to the Egyptians, and to the Grecian women.
 Tapestries figure in Holy Writ They were so costly that they could only be owned by kings. The Sa- racens, or Arabs, who founded an Art, a Religion, and an Empire, in D+o largest and most complete Tapestry weavings are the great textile pie lures. or storied wall-hangings. of the
 fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, made in Arras and Brussels. The stories on Tapestries ranged, in sub ject, from the Greek myths and gods to the doings of kings and to Scrip turaI subjects and lives of the saint.
 When the Spanish prosecutions overflowed the Netherlands and Ar ras, Tapestry-weaving was driven into France, where the Grand Monarque, Louis ", a lover of spIendor and patron of the Arts, immediately pUr- chased the house of Jean Gobelin, 1922 A. D.-who was a genius in weaving, and the King turned the house into a factory, in which Tap estries for the adornment of palaces should be made.
 Thus. the great name was born, from the name of their maker, for the noblest Tapestries in the world the Gobelins.
 One century earlier, in 1519, the Pope Leo x. paid from the Vatican Exchequer, one thousand pounds tive thousand do1lars) each for ths ten cartoons to Raphael, to be copied into a Tapestry, The Acts of the Apostles, for the Hallsof the Vatican, and the Pope paid one hundred and fifty thousand dollars to the mauu- facturer of that single Tapestry. Spain today owns the incomparable collection of Arras Tapestries, thus Arras is immortal, for her heroes and her Art IL is maintained that the Tapestry-weaver works on the wrong | side of the pattern, feeling his way | into the picture. So. life is being woven. daily. by the individual from | a pattern ahead of him-Only seen by | the Most High. Our own poet, Helen | Hunt, has written a touching poem | on this subject, called 'The Blind Weaver:
 | Like a blind spinner in the sun | I tread my days,
 I know that all the threads will run