By Astrid Bugge (1902-1988)

Editor’s note: This article was originally published in “By og Bygd” (Yearbook of the Norsk Folkemuseum), 1962, pp. 133-138. Today many of the tapestries described in the article are in the digital collections of museums and available for us to enjoy in color.

When the Norsk Folkemuseum acquired a pair of portieres¹ in transparent weaving technique in 1962, it was the fourth time this special type of weaving turned up in the museum’s collection. 

The first time was in 1954 when a set of two curtains and a single piece came from Louis Nicolay With’s villa, Haugen, at Hoff in Skøyen. Haugen is a typical Swiss-style villa with an interior of painted timber walls. A photograph from 1908 shows how the portieres hang in a broad  doorway so that the woven pattern appeared clearly against the transparent ground threads, as was intended. Now the same portieres are displayed in the dragon-style room in the city collection. The materials are all wool in many strong colors. The design: roosters, large flowers and twining leaves – all strongly stylized – are woven in with regular tapestry, but the ground consists only of uncovered warp, in this case two-ply dark blue yarn, doubled and tightly twisted, and “see-through” as the technique intends. The warp ends in long fringes at the bottom and the top. In the tightly-woven border at the bottom “DNB 1901 LXXXIII” is woven in, meaning “The Norwegian Tapestry Studio, production number 83, 1901.” The Norwegian Tapestry Studio was a company founded by Mrs. Randi Blehr with Frida Hansen as its director to undertake a revival of historical coverlet and tapestry weaving on a modern basis. It was active from 1897-1904. 

Frida Hansen, née Petersen, was born in 1855 at Hillevåg near Stavanger. She intended to become a painter and had studied drawing at home and abroad, but in the middle of the 1880s she became interested in our historical weaving. At the first Almindelig Norske Husflidsudstilling [Universal Norwegian Handcraft Exhibition] at Tivoli in Kristiania [now Oslo] in 1890 she displayed her first tapestry, Birkebeinerne, after a lithograph by Knud Bergslien. The exhibition catalog noted that “all the yarn for the tapestry was dyed and handspun by the artist.” Some time after the exhibit Frida Hansen moved to Oslo, and in 1892 opened her studio, with instruction in weaving for students from the city and countryside. This studio became the Norwegian Tapestry Studio in 1897, with large, light-filled rooms in the merchant Simonsen’s building at Stortorvet. The tapestries were woven on large vertical looms, one of Mrs. Hansen’s improved models. 

In 1894 Frida Hansen began a dye studio that worked with plant dyes and, after Miss Augusta Christensen’s method, dyed unspun wool that would be carded together afterwards. This allowed her to create yarn in a myriad of nuances and shades from 3-4 simple main colors. The jury at the World Exhibition in Paris in 1900 wrote that in this way Miss Christensen’s yarn attained color combinations that were more full of energy and fresher than by dyeing already-spun yarn. It was the theory of deconstructing colors in modern painting translated to yarn. 

Each yarn is specially spun for its location in the weaving, just as every nuance is specially blended for the painter’s brush, the jury concluded. 

This is a form of expression that we don’t fully understand in our time. With few exceptions, and perhaps especially with Mrs. Hansen, tapestries from the Art Nouveau period worked with their imprecise colors. Yarn from carded-together wool gives a different appearance than the juxtaposition of pure color areas in painting. Frida Hansen, who drew for tapestries herself, was moreover clear over the need for good cartoons and in 1897 received a royal grant of 1000 kroner for a studio for pattern designing.  

The first time The Norwegian Tapestry Studio [DNB] appeared was at the husflidsutstillningen [handcraft exhitibion] in Bergen in 1898. Among the things the press noted and was excited about was a pair of “distinctive portieres with dense flowers and transparent base…the see-through curtains, one of Mrs. Hansen’s artistic inventions.” A hanging in transparent weave with flowers in white and orange marked NABV 1898 X, which in 1962 was purchased by Kulturen in Lund [a museum in Sweden] is the earliest known example. (http://carl.kulturen.com/web/object/60480) so far. At that time the studio signed pieces with the original name, Norske Aklæde og Billedvæveri [NABV; Norwegian Weaving and Tapestry Studio], and had only reached example #10. 

But it was at the World Exhibition in Paris in 1900 that Mrs. Hansen’s work caused a sensation. We quote the judges committee: “Our attention was immediately drawn to a whole group of transparent weavings in the form of portieres. The greatest honor is due to Mrs. Frida Hansen, who has created the compositions of these completely modern portieres. They reveal her deep knowledge of the possibilities of weaving, and that with nuanced areas in a limited number of strong yet well-balanced colors you can create the most enchanting decorative effects. These textiles in transparent tapestry are the only ones of that type in the exhibition and they are, we will declare in two words, truly new. These weavings are designed to work as portieres between adjoining rooms. They are woven in a way that allows a person in one room to see what is unfolding in another room. The weaving, which is created like other tapestry on an upright loom, is woven on the warp threads only in the areas that create the pattern. The warps are left bare in the areas that would have been a one-color background.

“As you will understand from this short explanation, this is tapestry in which you weave only the pattern and not the background, and it is through the free spaces between the warp threads that you can see what is happening on the other side. Therefor you need an especially meticulous composition for the work. Even though the jury regrets that such a technique requires a high sales price, we admire the skill with which they are made and spare no congratulations in connection with this new creation, of which several examples are laid out for us in a variety of lively colors.”

Then the jury switched over to discussing Frida Hansen’s tapestries from Gerhard Munthe’s cartoons. The DNB, Frida Hansen, and Gerhard Munthe all received gold medals. 

When Frida Hansen returned to Oslo she was interviewed by Urd [a magazine], and she described her gold medal and the orders that came from museums in Copenhagen, Basel, Brno [in former Czechoslovakia] and Kensington. “‘It was especially the curtains in transparency that were sold at the exhibition, and now I have a new idea regarding them — ceramic beads. I think they will be beautiful — here you can see, I’ve made them myself,’ and she brought out some small things, glimmering in strange metal colors. ‘Don’t they remind you of antiquities, as from an old Egyptian find? They will form the sepals in flowers.’”

No examples of transparencies with beads have been found to date. 

Frida Hansen had taken a patent out on her discovery. When the Norwegian Tapestry Studio was discontinued in 1904, she gave up her patent. There were several others who took up the technique. According to Einar Lexow, the most important weaver in the Gobelin and transparency technique, in addition to Frida Hansen, was Ulrikke Greve. Using her own designs, Greve wove the other hangings the Norske Folkemuseum received from the Haugen villa, commissioned between 1910-1914. These are a pair of portieres in front of one door and a single hanging in front of a door in the same room. They are more tame in their designs than Frida Hansen’s rooster portieres, they have almost rug-like patterns in subdued tones, the first in reds and greens on a rust-red warp (https://digitaltmuseum.no/011023185982/portiere); the other in green, lilac and beige tones on a deep red warp (https://digitaltmuseum.no/011023185981/portiere-1-fag). The yarn is hand-spun and carded together, from dyed wool. 

At Norway’s Jubilee Exhibition at Frogner in 1914 there was a large showing of transparent weaving. Frida Hansen delivered two hangings, Hvite Fugler [White Birds], a long, narrow panel, and a large rectangular hanging, Sommernattsdrøm [Summer Night’s Dream]. The last had a completely tapestry image with trees, greenery and water, all quite stylized. They were both particularly noted by Carl W. Schnitler in the official exhibition document, who determined that it was the technique that gave Summer Night’s Dream its dream-like effect. 

Others who wove in the transparent technique around 1914 included the wife of Consul Robertson in Hammerfest (using a cartoon by Anette Schirmer); Ingeborg Arbo; Titti Karsten (sometimes with her own, and sometimes with her sister Marie’s designs); Ragna Nicolaisen; Agnes Røhr; and Aslaug Mohr in Bergen.  

The Norsk Folkemuseum’s newest transparent curtains were also at the Jubilee Exhibition in 1914. They were woven by Miss Aagot Lund from her own design: large red rowanberry clusters and leaves in different shades of green and brown against a warp of medium blue, doubled, tightly twisted three-ply wool yarn. The wool yarn here was also dyed, carded together, and handspun. 

Transparent weaving was taught in the tapestry course at Statens kvinnelige industriskole [National Women’s Arts and Design School] up through the mid-1920s. Husfliden [the Handcraft Association] in Oslo wove the last example of weaving in transparent technique, Ygdrasil, after a 1939 drawing by W. Nickelsen. Then it ended — unless there is still a romantic person sitting and weaving a dream into an open warp in this uniquely neo-romantic weaving technique. 

Astrid Bugge (1902-1988) was a conservator and author of many articles in museum magazines and yearbooks, in addition to several books. She was appointed the Senior Conservator for the Norsk Folkemuseum in 1954. 

Translated in March 2023 by Robbie LaFleur and Katherine Larson

¹A portiére is a curtain hung in a door opening, from the French word for door: porte. Wool transparent curtains or portieres were often sold as pairs, known as “et fag” in Norwegian.

Sources: 

“Selvhjælp,” Stavanger Husflidsforenings Tidskrift, I. February 1897, I. November 1898.

Husmoderen, 1898, p. 250.

Norges Deltagelse i Verdensutstillingen i Paris i 1900. K.V. Hammer, Kra. 1904, page 175. 

Urd, August 4, 1900, page 313. 

Marie Karsten, Billedvæv og Prydsøm. Kunst og Kultur, 1912, page 61.

Schnitler, Carl W. Norges Jubileumsutstilling 1914, Officiel Beretning, Kra. V. II, p. 432. 

Norske Kvinder, Kra. 1914, p. 421 ff. (Randi Blehr)

Einar Lexow: Moderne Decorativ Kunst i Norge. Kunst og Kultur 1919, p. 159. 

Help support wonderful articles on Scandinavian textiles with a donation to the Norwegian Textile Letter. Thank you! Tusen takk!