TAPESTRY

woven decorative fabric, the design of which is built up in the course of weaving. Broadly, the name may be used for any heavy material used to cover furniture, walls, or floors or even to decorate garments, but its narrower, more precise meaning limits its use to heavy, handwoven textiles usually used for wall hangings or upholstery. William Morris, the English Arts and Crafts theorist of the 19th century, likened tapestry to a mosaic made up of coloured threads, and the 20th century French architect Le Corbusier referred to tapestries as nomadic murals, decorative but movable and interchangeable. Tapestry has always been a luxury art, and its highest point of artistic achievement came under noble patronage in Flanders in the 15th century. Tapestries were frequently designed and woven in sets; it was not uncommon for a set to have six or more panels. The art of tapestry at its best is one in which weaver and designer work closely together. During the Middle Ages, when tapestry flourished, the weaver worked generally from the artist's design, or cartoon, frequently embellishing or refining it. Tapestry began to decline as an art from the Renaissance, when the goal of tapestry makers moved closer to that of painters, and designs became more and more illusionistic, with weavers attempting to create fine and intricate tapestries that imitated paintings on canvas. The art was revived toward the end of the 19th century and has flourished since then. The most commonly used material for tapestry is wool, though silk has historically been used in China and Japan, and linen, cotton, and even gold and silver have been employed. Tapestry is woven by passing weft threads (those that run horizontally across a textile) over and under warp threads (the vertical framework of threads) so that the latter are completely covered by the coloured weft. Tapestry differs from other types of weaving in that only rarely are the weft threads carried across the complete width of the fabric. Specific colours are carried across only as far as necessary in a given row to create a particular section of the design. The work of weaving a tapestry, therefore, is skilled and detailed, and the final design is only apparent after much slow and meticulous work by the weaver. The fineness of the tapestry, and thus the level of pictorial detail it is capable of rendering, is determined by the number of threads to the inch. In Europe, weavers of the Renaissance achieved a level of fineness that has not been surpassed; silk tapestries of Asia are also particularly fine. Tapestry cartoons were prepared and coloured by artists as guides to the weaver. Frequently more than one set was woven from a set of cartoons. Among the most famous cartoons in the history of art is the set made by Raphael in the 16th century depicting the Acts of the Apostles and the set made by Peter Paul Rubens in the 17th century called the Triumph of the Eucharist. Both were reused, copied, and imitated many times. The great period of European tapestry was the Middle Ages, from the 14th century when the art became firmly established and fashionable. The most famous medieval tapestry is the seven-piece Angers Apocalypse begun in 1377 in Paris. The other great centre of tapestry making at the time was in Flanders, especially the town of Arras, where the greatest tapestries of the early 15th century were made. Later in the century Tournai and Brussels became the centres. Flemish weavers set up workshops throughout Europe from the 16th century and took the art as far afield as Spain, Italy, and England. the so-called Bayeux Tapestry of medieval England is actually a work of embroidery. In the 17th century an important French tapestry industry was established with the aid of imported Flemish weavers. The two most famous factories were the Gobelins in Paris and the manufactory at Beauvais. The Gobelins produced furnishings for the royal palaces, notably Versailles, while the products of Beauvais served the nobility and the rich middle class. A revival of medieval techniques and designs occurred in England in the 19th century, and in the 20th century tapestry attracted the interest of many of the leading artistsincluding Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, and Georges Braque. The French artist Jean Lurat was particularly instrumental in reestablishing the close relationship that had existed in medieval times between craftsman and artist. One of the most ambitious tapesties of the century, Christ in Glory, was designed in 1962 by the English painter Graham Southerland and woven at the Aubusson factory in France for the newly rebuilt St. Michael's Cathedral at Coventry, Warwickshire (now West Midlands). woven decorative fabric, the design of which is built up in the course of weaving. Broadly, the name has been used for almost any heavy material, handwoven, machine woven, or even embroidered, used to cover furniture, walls, or floors or for the decoration of clothing. Since the 18th and 19th centuries, however, the technical definition of tapestry has been narrowed to include only heavy, reversible, patterned or figured handwoven textiles, usually in the form of hangings or upholstery fabric. Tapestry traditionally has been a luxury art afforded only by the wealthy, and even in the 20th century large-scale handwoven tapestries are too expensive for those with moderate incomes. Tapestries are usually designed as single panels or sets. A tapestry set is a group of individual panels related by subject, style, and workmanship and intended to be hung together. The number of pieces in a set varies according to the dimensions of the walls to be covered. The designing of sets was especially common in Europe from the Middle Ages to the 19th century. A 17th-century set, the Life of Louis XIV, designed by the king's painter Charles Le Brun, included 14 tapestries and two supplementary panels. The number of pieces in 20th-century sets is considerably smaller. Polynesia, designed by the modern French painter Henri Matisse, for example, has only two pieces, and Mont-Saint-Michel, woven from a cartoon by the contemporary engraver and sculptor Henri-Georges Adam, is a triptych (three panels). Until the 19th century, tapestries were often ordered in Europe by the room rather than by the single panel. A room order included not only wall hangings but also tapestry weavings to upholster furniture, cover cushions, and make bed canopies and other items. Most Western tapestry, however, has been used as a type of movable monumental decoration for large architectural surfaces, though in the 18th century, tapestries were frequently encased in the woodwork. In the West, tapestry traditionally has been a collective art combining the talents of the painter, or designer, with those of the weaver. The earliest European tapestries, those woven in the Middle Ages, were made by weavers who exercised much of their own ingenuity in following the cartoon, or artist's sketch for the design. Though he followed the painter's directions and pattern fairly closely, the weaver did not hesitate to make departures from them and assert his own skills and artistic personality. In the Renaissance, tapestries increasingly became woven reproductions of paintings, and the weaver was no longer regarded as the painter's collaborator but became his imitator. In medieval France and Belgium, as well as now, a painter's work was always executed in tapestry through the intermediary of the weaver. Tapestry woven directly by the painter who created it remains an exception, almost exclusive to ladies' handiwork. Additional reading General works W.G. Thomson, A History of Tapestry from the Earliest Times to the Present Day, 3rd ed. rev. and ed. by F.P. Thomson and E.S. Thomson (1973), a standard work on the history of tapestry, which has been updated by F.P. Thomson, Tapestry: Mirror of History (1980); M.J. Guiffrey, E. Muntz, and A. Pinchart, Histoire generale de la tapisserie, 3 vol. (197885), French tapestries discussed by Guiffrey, Italian tapestries by Muntz, Flemish tapestries by Pinchart; M. Fenaille, tat general des tapisseries de la manufacture des Gobelins depuis son origine jusqu'a nos jours, 16001900, 6 vol. (190323), a work of primary importance, presenting a detailed history of the Gobelins factory; J. Badin, La Manufacture de tapisseries de Beauvais, depuis ses origines jusqu'a nos jours (1909), a basic reference for the history of tapestry production at the Beauvais factory; Wandteppiche, 6 vol. (192334; Eng. trans. of pt. 1, Tapestries of the Lowlands, 1924), a general worldwide treatment of tapestry, with numerous black and white illustrations, although many of the European medieval attributions have been questioned or rejected; G.L. Hunter, The Practical Book of Tapestries (1925), precise and useful descriptions, with numerous reproductions; C.G. Janneau, volution de la tapisserie (1947), illustrations and technical information on collections of European tapestries, some of which have been subsequently disbanded with works relocated; D. Heinz, Europische Wandteppiche, vol. 1, Von den Anfngen der Bildwirkerei bis zum Ende des 16. Jahrhunderts (1963), a thorough treatment of tapestry up to the end of the 16th century, with a typological index, an extensive bibliography, and numerous illustrations; R.A. Weigert, La Tapisserie et le tapis en France (1964), a scholarly discussion of the history of French tapestry; P. Verlet et al., La Tapisserie: histoire et technique du 14e au 20e siecle (1977; Eng. trans., The Book of Tapestry: History and Technique, 1978), a well-illustrated volume on Western tapestry from the Middle Ages to the 20th century; Madeleine Jarry, La Tapisserie des origines a nos jours (1968; Eng. trans., World Tapestry, 1969), a well-documented study of tapestry throughout the world, including an extensive bibliography and many black and white and colour illustrations, and La Tapisserie: art du 20e siecle (1974), a study of the worldwide renascence of tapestry during the 20th century; V. Fougre, Tapisseries de notre temps (1969), a brief study of contemporary French tapestry, with an index of tapestry artists and illustrated with black and white and colour reproductions; R.A. d'Hulst, Flemish Tapestries (1967), an elaborate study of Flemish tapestry from the Middle Ages to the Baroque periods, with many colour illustrations; R. Kaufmann, The New American Tapestry (1968), a well-illustrated text dealing with technique as well as with the works of leading American tapestry designers and weavers; G. Sutherland, Coventry Tapestry (1964), an interesting account of the design, weaving, and installation of Sutherland's tapestry for Coventry cathedral; M.B. Freeman, The Unicorn Tapestries (1976), a detailed and well-illustrated history of these tapestries, which are housed at the Cloisters, a branch of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City; P. Ackerman, Tapestry: The Mirror of Civilization (1933, reprinted 1970), one of the classic works in English dealing with the historical development of European tapestry. Laya Brostoff, Weaving a Tapestry (1982), is a brief overview with bibliography. Collection catalogs Important illustrated catalogs of tapestry collections include: A.S. Cavallo, Tapestries of Europe and Colonial Peru in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 2 vol. (1967); D. Du Bon, Tapestries from the Samuel H. Kress Collection at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (1964); H.C. Marillier, The Tapestries at Hampton Court Palace, London, 2nd ed. (1962), and with A.J. Wace, Marlborough Tapestries at Blenheim Palace (1968); N.Y. Biryukova, The Leningrad Hermitage Gothic and Renaissance Tapestries (1966); M. Crick Kuntziger, Musees royaux d'Art et d'Histoire: Catalogues des tapisseries (1956); A.m. Erkelens, Wandtapijten I. Late Goteik en vroege Renaissance, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (1962); and A.F. Kendrick, Catalogue of Tapestries at the Victoria and Albert Museum (1924). Tapestries of the second half of the 20th century are shown in numerous exhibition catalogs, such as Erika Sellman-Bsching, Tapisserien 1970 bis 1981 (1981); F. Vialet, Tapisseries contemporaines d'Aubusson (1981); Swiss Tapestries, Artists of Today (1981).