Studio: international art (58.1913)

Modern Swedish Tapestry

is absent—only a fountain with a rich jet of water ■» r ODERN TAPESTRY-WORK
splashing over its basin, and seen against a back- |\/| IN SWEDEN. BY AGNES
ground of lake and mountain-side. _ IVIbRANTING. (Translated by E.

Water seems always a predilection of this painter,

• ii-iii i i j Adams-Ray.)
and is treated invariably with absolute knowledge J '

and brilliant effect; but water in all its forms is Among all the many different forms in which
but a mirror, reflecting and absorbing light. " The sloyd * is practised in our days in Sweden none is
efforts of modern painting," it has been said by an more general or is exercised in a greater variety of
Italian critic, " are almost unanimously centred ways than textile handiwork. This circumstance
upon the conquest of light" ; and if Paolo Sala is not the result of any passing fashion or of any
is less directly grappling with this fascinating accidental aesthetic current, but it is the sound
problem than his great contemporary at Milan, and natural development of an artistic sloyd, which
Gaetano Previati, that is not to say that his art is has been cultivated in this country for unnumbered
not deeply concerned with its more subtle mani- centuries.

festations. In the rendering of cloud and sky and It was at a very early period that textile sloyd
water, interpreting and interpenetrated with light and in Sweden gained a decorative character. The
atmosphere, of scenes from the city or lake or moun- dwelling-house, which in ancient times consisted
tain-side, and whether in the medium of oil or water- of a building with a high-pitched roof with no
colour, his art is unequalled in modern Italy and has ceiling to the rooms, needed, for practical reasons,
yet to reach its highest utterance. S. B. an interior textile covering overhead as a protec-

tion against falling dust and the
cold. There soon arose, too, a
desire to adorn the walls of the
house, and the principal means
employed for this purpose were
textile productions. These, while
thus used for practical purposes,
could be made to brighten and en-
rich the rooms with their wealth of
ornament and colour; they were
easily removed, when necessary, for
the purpose of being changed or
cleaned.

Even if many specimens of textile
work were brought here from
foreign countries, still we have evi-
dence that a great proportion of
the tapestries were made in Swedish
homes, and ancient chronicles relate
how noble ladies in Sweden were
distinguished by their skill in artistic
textile sloyd.

* The word " sloyd " (Swed. sl'djd) is
a term that has become pretty widely
known in Great Britain and America
since about the year 1887, when English-
speaking students first went to work at
the sloyd school at Naas, in Sweden.
The word signifies the production of
articles by hand, as opposed to making
them in vast quantities by the almost
exclusive employment of machinery.
Knitting, sewing, weaving, carpentry-
work, &c, are, in this sense, all forms

womes at the fountain " (water-colour) by paolo sala of sloyd.

i02

j