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.


 self History is the most absurd re- peater It is a watch that always goes back and does the same inane 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, 1854, when the Spaniards were defeated and rolled out of the Dutch Nether- lands and out of Flanders by the Great French Marshal Turenne. It 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 its 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. a : when, Hamlet stahs Polonius behind the rras'-meaning the great cur tain, or Tapestry, hung in royal apartments.
 The art of Tapestry-makins was first introduced into England in 1920, the year of the sailing of the May flower from Plymouth, and introduce ed by William Sheldon. 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 
 he creates designs, called cartoons, which are the soul of his work. Tap estry-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 troduCed Tapestry into Europe. The largest and most complete Tapestry weavings are the great textile pie lures. or storied waIl-hangings, of tha 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 tural subjects and lives of the saint
 When the Spanish persecution: overflowed the Netherlands and Ar ras, Tapestry-weaving was driven into France, where the Grand Monarque Louis ", a lover of splendor ana patron of the Arts, immediately pur. chased the house of Jean GObelin 1922 A D.-who was a genius 1T ! weaving, and the King turned tht 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, fo | the noblest Tapestries in the worlC the Gobelins.
 One century earlier, in 1519, tn, Pope Leo x. paid from the Vatican | Exchequer, one thousand pound | tive thousand dollars) each for tn | ten cartoons to Raphael, to be copied | into a Tapestry, The Acts of tn | Apostles, for the Hallsoff the Vatican
 and the Pope paid one hundred an, | fifty thousand dollars to the manu | facturer of that single Tapestry. Spain today owns the incomparabl' | collection of Arras Tapestries, thu | Arras is immortal, for her heroes anC her Art. IL is maintained that thu | Tapestry-weaver works on the wron:
 side of the pattern, feeling his wa! into the picture. So. life is beins woven, daily, by the individual iron | a pattern ahead of him-only seen b7 | the Most High. Our own poet, Heller ! Hunt, has written a touching poem | on this subject called ''The Blin, 1 Weaver:
 | Like a blind spinner in the sun I tread my days,