r-de-lis and the initial P, and the
initials of the weaver.

[Illustration: PARIS]

[Illustration: ALEX. DE COMANS]

[Illustration: CHARLES DE COMANS]

That Jean Lefevre, who with his father Pierre was imported into Italy
to set the mode of able weaving for the Florentines, had a sign
unmistakable on the Gobelins tapestries of the _History of the King_.
(Plate facing page 114.) It was a simple monogram or union of his
initials. In the Eighteenth Century the Gobelins took the fleur-de-lis
of Paris, and its own initial letter G. The modern Gobelins' marks
combined the G with an implement of the craft, a _broche_ and a
straying thread.

[Illustration: JEAN LEFEVRE]

[Illustration: GOBELINS, 18TH CENTURY]

[Illustration: GOBELINS, MODERN]

In Italy, in the middle of the Sixteenth Century, we find the able
Flemings, Nicholas Karcher and John Rost, using their personal marks
after the manner of their country. Karcher thus signed his
marvellously executed grotesques of Bacchiacca which hang in the
gallery of tapestries in Florence. (Plates facing pages 48 and 49.)
John Rost's fancy led him to pun upon his name by illustrating a fowl
roasting on the spit. Karcher had a little different mark in the
Ferrara looms, where he went at the call of the d'Este Duke.

[Illustration: KARCHER, FLORENCE]

[Illustration: JOHN ROST]

[Illustration: KARCHER, FERRARA]

The Florence factory made a mark of its own, refreshingly simple,
avoiding all of the cabalistic intricacies that are so often made
meaningless by the passing of the years, and which were affected by
the early Brussels weavers. The mark found on Florence tapestries is
the famous Florentine lily, and the initial of the town. The mark of
Pierre Lefevre, when weaving here, was a combination of letters.

[Illustration: PIERRE LEFEVRE, FLORENCE]

[Illustration: MORTLAKE]

When the Mortlake factory was established in England, the date was
sufficiently late, 1619, for marking to be considered a necessity. The
factory mark was a simple shield quartered by means of a cross thrown
thereon. Sir Francis Crane contented himself with a simple F. C., one
a-top the other, as his identification. Philip de Maecht, he whose
family went from Holland to England as tapissiers, directed at
Mortlake the weaving of a part of the celebrated _Vulcan_ and _Venus_
series, and his monogram can be seen on _The Expulsion of Vulcan from
Olympus_ (coloured plate facing p