Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 24.djvu/493

Rh W E B W E B 467 warp be passed through a single split of the reed, except when the doups are placed in front of the reed, which is done in the case of complicated gauze weaving. Piled fabrics are textures woven with a looped or otherwise raised surface. Looped pile is any fabric in which the woven loops remain uncut, as in Brussels and tapestry carpets and terry velvets. When these loops are cut in the finished texture then the material is a cut pile, such as ordinary velvet, fustian, imitation sealskin, and other imitation furs. For D land 2 ordinary loop and cut pile fabrics two warps are re quired, the regular beam warp and the &quot;pole &quot; or pile warp. TLn latfpr lipincr rftisfld into FlG - 12 -~ Drafting of Gauze AVeb. li ino latter, being laiseu ordinary hcddles; D, dour, heddle. loops, is worked up more rapidly than the ordinary warp, and it has consequently to be of greater length and wound on a separate beam. The ground or foundation may be either a plain or a twilled texture, and after every third pick of weft a wire is introduced into the shed and beaten up and woven into the cloth. In this way, by the stretching of the pile warp over the wire, a row of loops is formed across the web, the size of the loops being regulated by the size of the wire. If a looped pile is being woven then it only remains to pull out the wires from behind and again weave them in in front as the work proceeds. But if cut pile is being made, then either the loops must be cut along the top before the wire is withdrawn, or the wire may at one end be provided with a knife edge which itself cuts the loops as it is being pulled out. For velvets, &c. , the wires are provided with a groove on their upper face, and along this groove a cutting knife called a trivet is run to cut the loops. In fig. 13 the structure of a looped and cut velvet is illustrated. Fustian is a cut pile fabric in which the weft mate rial, floated over the surface, forms the substance of the pile. FIG. 13. Section of Looped Pile Fabric. It is not woven over wires, and the pile is cut by hand after the web leaves the loom. A third method of weaving pile fabrics consists of making a double web, the pile warp passing from the one to the other and binding them together, as shown in fig. 14. When the connecting threads are cut they form a pile surface for each separate cloth. The great difficulty which has FIG. 14. Section of Double-Web Plush, been encountered in per fecting this method of pile weaving has been to keep the connecting pile equal in length throughout, and to cut it so as to produce uniform level surfaces. The success which has been attained in plush weaving with double cloth is largely due to the patient and well-directed efforts of Mr S. C. Lister, of Manningham Mills, Bradford. There are many subsidiary but highly important and most ingenious features of the art of weaving, specially in connexion with the production of ornamental surfaces, for notice of which it has been impossible to find room in the preceding summary. The extent and complexity of the whole subject renders the present ation of a satisfactory outline of the art a matter of unusual difficulty; but those who wish to pursue the subject in detail, in addition to copious information to be gleaned from technical journals, may consult Barlow s History and Principles of Weaving (London, 1R78), Ashenhurst s Weaving and Designing of Textile Fabrics (Bradford, 1879), and Brown s Practical Treatise on the Art of Weaving (4th ed., Dundee, 1883). To the two works first named we have to acknowledge our indebtedness for the suggestions of several diagrams. (J. PA.) WEBEK, CARL MARIA FRIEDKICH ERNST VON (1786- 182G), musical composer and creator of &quot;romantic opera,&quot; was born at Eutin, near Liibeck, December 18, 1786, of a family that had long been devoted to art. His father, Baron Franz Anton von Weber, a military officer in the service of the palgrave Karl Theodor, was an excellent violinist, and his mother once sang on the stage. His cousins, Josepha, Aloysia, Constanze, and Sophie, daughters of Franz Anton s brother Fridolin, attained a high reputation as vocalists. Mozart, after having been cruelly deceived by Aloysia, made Constanze his wife, and thus became Franz Anton s nephew by marriage. Fridolin played the violin nearly as well as his brother ; and the whole family displayed exceptional talent for music. Franz Anton von Weber was a man of thriftless habits and culpable eccentricity. Having been wounded at Eos- bach, he quitted the army, and in 1758 he was appointed financial councillor to Clement August, elector of Cologne, who for nine years overlooked his incorrigible neglect of duty. But the elector s successor dismissed him in 1768; and for many years after this he lived in idleness at Hildesheim, squandering the property of his wife, Anna de Fumetti, and doing nothing for the support of his children until 1778, when he was appointed director of the opera at Liibeck. In 1779 the prince bishop of Eutin made him his kapellmeister, and not long afterwards his wife died of a broken heart. Five years later he went to Vienna, placed two of his sons under Michael Haydn, and in 1785 married the young Viennese singer Genovefa von Brenner, who in the following year gave birth, at Eutin, to the subject of the present article a delicate child, afflicted with congenital disease of the hip-joint. On his return from Vienna, Franz Anton, finding that a new kapellmeister had been chosen in his place, ac cepted the humbler position of &quot; Stadt Musikant.&quot; This, however, he soon relinquished; and for some years he wandered from town to town, giving dramatic perform ances, in conjunction with the children of his first wife, wherever he could collect an audience. The effect of this restless life upon the little Carl Maria s health and educa tion was deplorable ; but, as he accompanied his father everywhere, he became familiarized with the stage from his earliest infancy, and thus gained an amount of dramatic experience that indisputably laid the foundation of his future greatness. Franz Anton hoped to see him develop into an infant prodigy, like his cousin Mozart, whose marvellous career was then rapidly approaching its close. In furtherance of this scheme, the child was taught to sing and place his fingers upon the pianoforte almost as soon as he could speak, though he was unable to walk until he was four years old. Happily his power of observation and aptitude for general learning were so precocious that he seems, in spite of all these disadvantages, to have in stinctively educated himself as became a gentleman. His first music-master was Keuschler, who gave him instruction at Weimar in 1796. In 1798 Michael Haydn taught him gratuitously at Salzburg. In the March of that year his mother died, like her predecessor, of chagrin. In April the family visited Vienna, removing in the autumn to Munich. Here the child s first composition a set of &quot; Six Fughettas &quot; was published, with a pompous dedication to his half- brother Edmund; and here also he took lessons in singing from Valesi, and in composition from Kalcher, under whom he made rapid progress. Soon after this he began to play successfully in public, and his father compelled him to write incessantly. Among the compositions of this period were a mass and an opera Die Mac/it der Liebe und des Weins now destroyed. A set of &quot;Variations for the Pianoforte,&quot; composed a little later, and dedicated to Kalcher, was lithographed by Carl Maria himself, under the guidance of Senefelder, the inventor of the process, in which both the father and the child took great interest. In 1800 the family removed to Freiberg, where the Ritter von Steinsberg gave Carl Maria the libretto of an opera called Das Waldmadchen, which the boy, though not yet fourteen years old, at once set to music, and produced in November at the Freiberg theatre. The performance was by no means successful, and the composer himself was accustomed to speak of the work as &quot; a very immature production&quot;; yet it was afterwards reproduced at Chemnitz, and even at Vienna. Carl Maria returned with his father to Saizburg in 1801, resuming his studies under Michael Haydn, and forming a close friendship with the Chevalier Neukomm. Here also he composed his second opera, Peter Schmoll und seine Nachbarn, which was unsuccessfully produced at Nurem-