Italian artists,
it is interesting to note the richness given to surfaces solidly
filled in with gold by throwing the thread in groups of four. The
light is thus caught and reflected, almost as though from a heap of
cut topaz. This characterises the tapestries of the _Mercury_ series
in the Blumenthal collection.

Naturally, the evenness of the weaving has much to do with the value
of the piece--otherwise the pains of the old weavers would have been
futile. The surface smooth, free from lumps or ridges, strong with the
even strength of well-matched threads, this is the beauty that
characterises the best work this side of the Fifteenth Century.

It is the especial prerogative of the merchant to touch with his own
hands a great number of tapestries. It is by this handling of the
fabric that he acquires a skill in determining the make of many a
tapestry. There is an indefinable quality about certain wools, and
about the manner of their weaving that is only revealed by the touch.
Not all hands are wise to detect, but only those of the sympathetic
lover of the materials they handle--and I have found many such among
the merchant collector. But even he finds identification a task as
difficult as it is interesting, and spends hours of thought and
research before arriving at a conclusion--and even then will retract
on new evidence.

COPIES

There are certain pitfalls into which one may so easily fall that they
must never be out of mind. The worst of these, the pit which has the
most engaging and innocent entrance, is that of the copy, the modern
tapestry copied from the old a few decades ago.

It is easy to find by reference to the huge volumes of French writers
on tapestry just when certain sets of cartoons were first woven. Take,
for example, the _Acts of the Apostles_ by Raphael; Brussels, 1519, is
the authentic date. But after that the Mortlake factory in England
wove a set, and others followed. This instance is too historic to be
entirely typical, but there are others less known. It was the habit of
factories that possessed a valuable set of cartoons to repeat the
production of these in their own factory, and also to make some
arrangement whereby other factories could also produce the same set of
hangings.

In the evil days that fell upon Brussels after her apogee, copying her
own works took the place of new matters. Also, in the French factories
in their prime, the same set was repeated on the same looms and on