January 21st (continued).

The Gobelin factory lies on the south bank of the river Seine. ‘Gobelin’ is the name given to a colourful patterned textile woven from woollen yarn which is similar to the figured brocade of Kyoto. Gobelin designs are copied from oil-paintings and look as if they themselves have been painted; from a distance of several yards one cannot tell that they have been woven. In their supreme beauty and intricate workmanship, these tapestries are the most exquisite of fabrics and command exceedingly high prices. Small pieces are framed as pictures and larger ones used as wall-hangings. In the grand houses of royalty and aristocrats, it is considered the height of luxury to hang Gobelins on the walls, and we often saw them in palaces in every country. Other nations have studied and imitated the techniques, but none can match the beauty of the tapestries made in France.

While the pictorial, patterning and weaving skills in this factory are all extremely refined, there is no deep secret behind the design principles, but the technique of dyeing the thread is of critical importance. Threads are steeped in dye for successively shorter periods until they absorb virtually no pigment at all, thus creating more than ten shades of the same colour, from the deepest to the lightest. When these threads are laid next to each other, the colour becomes progressively fainter. Without this process, it would be hard to create the effects of light and shade.