rned
backwards." This might be a description of a Chinese composition, and
probably it is so.[392]

Woven tapestry is also called "Arras,"[393] because that town in the
Netherlands was the home and school of the art of picture weaving in
the Middle Ages. It has been hitherto excluded from the domain of
needlework, because of the different use of the needle employed in
it. It has always been woven on a loom, and is, in fact, embroidery
combined with the weaving; for the shuttle, or slay, or comb completes
each row of stitches. It belongs as much to our art as does tambour
work, which is done with a hook instead of a needle. Tapestry weaving
is the intelligent craft of a practised hand guided by artistic skill.
The forms of the painted design must be copied by a person who can
draw; and the colours require as much care in selection, as in
painting with oils or water-colours. Such a thing as a purely
mechanical exact copy is impossible in any art; and the difficulties
are increased a hundredfold when it is a translation into another
material, and another form of art. Besides, in this case, the copies
are worked from the back, and the picture is reversed. The question is
this: Can it be claimed as belonging to the same craft as embroidery?
I answer in the affirmative, and I claim it.

"When the Saracens began to weave tapestry we cannot tell; but the
workers in woven pictures were called Sarassins, and their craft, the
'opus Saracenicum.'"[394] The French and Flemish artisans who
continued to weave in the old upright frames (_haute-lisse_) were,
whether Christians or not, called "Sarassins." Probably they came
through Spain, possibly from Sicily to Flanders and to France, or else
from Byzantium. Viollet-le-Duc says that the "Saracinois" was a term
applied to the makers of velvety carpets (_tapis veloutes_).[395] This
is possible.[396] Woven carpets of Oriental type were spreading
themselves as articles of luxury through Europe early in the Middle
Ages; and the Persian style of design was much the same then, when the
first models were brought to Spain, and thence to Arras, as it is now
in the carpets we buy just woven in Persia.[397] The oldest specimens
known here have been exhibited in the Indian Museum, and may be of the
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The perishable nature of the
material makes us dependent on the sculptured records of all artistic
design for our knowledge of carpets and hangings of more than a
t