To accompany the Tom Phillips exhibition WOVEN MUSIC
at Galeria Tapeçarias de Portalegre
Wool is the noblest of all the fibres, even able to forgive bad handling in its transformation. It might even be said that there is no such thing as good or bad quality, only good or bad uses to which it is put. It makes the thickest materials, useful for the more unfortunate, to the most delicate of touches and subtle colours, for the more fortunate. The texture of its tubular fibres form coniform layers, containing air, the best insulation against both cold and heat, the origin of the saying that material that keeps the cold out also keeps the heat in.
Born in Colvilbã, land of wool, and son of a wool merchant, it is almost true to say that I was born in a sack of wool back in the distant twenties. For I was born at home and in my parents’ house the mattresses, as was usual at the time, were filled with raw wool. I soon began to enjoy going to the factory with my father where I like playing in the warehouses, jumping into the bins of wool, wandering through the workshops where the skilled craftsmen taught me how to walk past the moving machines, satisfied my curiosity and loved the little boy. I remember that one of my favourite occupations was to sit for hours on end inside the moving waste box of knotted yarns next to the spinner while he, my great friend, told me stories to the rhythmical to and fro of his machine. They were almost always related to the wool industry and were to form useful memories that have accompanied me through life.
My father loved his profession and most of all liked to make materials for women. That was his field of dreams working with fine wools and trying out subtle designs and delicate colours. When he made experimental materials called “coupons”, if the fabric were novel and sufficiently interesting I remember how he would reserve some for my sister to have a dress made.
He liked to talk to me about the wools and showed me that richness is not in the profusion of colours, but in their distribution. A principle which is just as valid today in a tapestry.
I have always lived with wool, except when I was at school, even during the two years I spent at night classes studying design and dyeing at the Campos Melo Industrial School in Colvilbã. This tale of my relationship with wool is an attempt to explain the fascination that it had and has for me and the importance of its contribution to the present-day tapestry of Portalegre.
When Manuel Celestino Peixeiro (junior) and I made up our minds to revive the knotted tapestries which Manuel do Carmo Peixeiro (senior) had made in Portalegre I was in my element: wool. Then when Manuel do Carmo Peixeiro appeared in the factory with his sample of tapestry, born in Roubaix twenty five years earlier, three thoughts entered my head. Firstly the tapestry that I had seen in museums and old palaces was the highest form of expression, the greatest tribute that I could pay to the queen of all natural fibres. Secondly that it would be an exciting challenge to make a tapestry with a new technique which would be quite different from the comparative ease of reproducing something traditional by centuries-old techniques. Thirdly, here was a new material at the disposal of national artists who would have to study the new technique along with us, so we could produce beautiful works of art. Without good designs, created bearing the end product in mind, there could be no beautiful tapestry.
That is how, in collaboration with Manuel do Carmo Peixeiro, I came to involve myself heart and soul in the choosing of wools their spinning, in the choice of suitable plys, the colours to be used in dyeing, moth proofing and so many small but necessary details. All that was made possible however, as I was a partner in the Fãbrica de Lanifícos de Portalegre (The Portalegre Woollen Mills).
It was there with the help of the painter Jodo Tavares from Portalegre, that the first practical tests were carried out. Work in larger dimensions came later with the collaboration of Almada, Pomar, Manuel Lapa, Maria Keil, Ventura Porfirio and Lima de Freitas. It was then that the disappointments began with the lack of interest shown by a number of invited painters, who expressed their doubts loudly and clearly. Painters, architects, decorators whom I had come to know in various groups in Lisbon who said: Portugese tapestry? But Why? When tapestry was referred to or used it was French. I told them I intended to carry on regardless, and on the day I was able to prove to them that there was Portuguese tapestry at the factory I would stop.
I did not lose heart and continued to fight for a Portuguese tapestry with the stitch that is known today as “Portalegre”. My father was equally fascinated by tapestry and insisted on checking any finished work. It was during this period that the Manufactura piled up debts. My father had a talk with me saying that he did not like to see me working in the factory and losing the money I earned on tapestries but he had not the heart to tell me to stop. I had to be the one to decide. I made my decision. I would prove the viability of the new technique and then stop.
The moment of decision came with an exhibition of two tapestries by Camarinba for the Governor’s Mansion in Madeira. This was followed by the first commissions from the government and I could not stop. Those tapestries served to show unbelievers that it was possible, and it is possible to have a completely Portuguese tapestry technique which created honours that noble, and most faithful of fibres: wool.
Postscript: from an article by José Sommer Ribeiro, Director of Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation’s Modern Art Centre.
In May 1952, in Paris, Guy Fino met Jean Lurçat who would visit the Manufactura de Portalegre in April 1958. Here he saw one of his tapestries woven in France in the traditional method, beside another sample based on the same cartoon which had been made in Portugal using the new technique. Faced with the two samples and asked to identify the French one, Lurçat pointed at the Portalegre product.
From then up to his death, many of Lurçat’s tapestries were woven in Portalegre. Numerous Portuguese artists benefited from Lurçat’s experience and the contact they had with him. We can say that it was largely due to Lurçat that Portalegre established connections with other artists and foreign customers.
"Woven Music", an exhibition of works by Tom Phillips and Portalegre Tapestries based on Phillips' work, was on display at the Galeria Tapeçarias de Portalegre, Lisbon, Portugal, from December 2002 through February 2003. For more information, see the "Woven Music" exhibition overview.
To Contact Manufactura Tapeçarias Portalegre, email: tapecariasportalegre@clix.pt
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