History of Tapestry

The term tapestry refers to hand-woven, figured fabrics--usually of silk or

wool--used for wall hangings and furniture upholstery. A tapestry is
composed of a foundation weave, the warp, across which are passed the
different colored threads of the weft, which forms a decorative pattern. The
warp is covered completely by the weft threads, which are taken across the
width of the warp first in one direction and then in the other within the
boundaries of the different zones of color.

Technique

The colors and shapes of the pattern are indicated in a plan, or preliminary
design, of the tapestry called the cartoon (see CARTOON, art). Tapestries
are woven on either high-warp or low-warp looms. The high-warp loom is
vertical, with the warp threads stretched vertically between two rollers. The
warp threads, usually linen, wool, or cotton, are separated by a rounded
rod into two sets, back and front, of odd and even threads. All the even-
numbered threads are placed in front of the separating rod and remain
free, and the odd-numbered threads remain at the back, each encircled by
a short loop, or heddle. By pulling on the heddles, which are attached to
bars, with the left hand, the weaver brings the back threads through to the
front; at the same time, the right hand threads the weft in between the two
series of warp threads with a shuttle. The weft thread is passed first over
the back set of warp threads (half weft) and then in the other direction over
the front set, making a complete weft. On a low-warp loom the warp
threads are stretched horizontally between the two rollers. The threads,
again divided into an odd and even series, are now all equipped with
heddles, which are arranged underneath the warp threads and controlled
by treadles. By pressing down with the foot alternately on the treadles, the
weaver can lower first one and then the other series of warp threads,
allowing more rapid progress than high-warp weaving in which the weaver
works with the hands alone.

History
Both systems were known and used in the earliest tapestries: a painting
(c.3000 BC) found in the necropolis of Beni Hasan in Egypt shows a high-
warp loom; the finest and most interesting of ancient tapestries were also
produced by this method in Egypt by the Copts in the 1st century AD.
Excavations and research by archaeologists and historians have proved
that the process of tapestry weaving was also known and practiced by the
Hebrews, Greeks, Romans, Chinese, and Incas, among other ancient
peoples.

Tapestries were not produced in Europe until about the 11th century.
Thought to be the oldest surviving Western tapestry, the Cloth of Saint
Gereon (originally in the Church of Saint Gereon in Cologne, Germany) is
divided in fragments among the Kunstgewerbe museum in Berlin, the
Musee Historique des Tissus in Lyon, France, the Victoria and Albert
Museum in London, and the Germanisches Museum in Nuremberg,
Germany. Generally assumed to have been woven in Cologne in the early
11th century, it bears ornaments similar to those in illuminated
manuscripts of the period. Germany, especially the region of Saxony, was a
center for tapestries woven during the Romanesque period; examples are
preserved in Halberstadt Cathedral.

By the 12th and 13th centuries, high- and low-warp weaving was practiced
in France and Belgium, with centers of production established during the
Gothic period in Paris and Arras in France and Tournai and Brussels in
Belgium. The Parisian tapestry industry reached its height during the 14th
century due to the royal patronage of Charles V of France and his brothers-
-Louis d'Anjou; Jean, Duc de Berry; and Philip the Bold, Duke of
Burgundy. For Louis d'Anjou, the Parisian merchant and master weaver
Nicolas Bataille supplied (1377-80) the seven immense Apocalypse
tapestries (Musee des Tapisseries, Angers, France), the largest tapestry
series ever woven, from cartoons by Hennequin de Bruges inspired by
illuminated manusc Æripts of the Book of Revelation. The Burgundian
dukes--Philip the Bold and his descendants John the Fearless, Philip the
Good, and Charles the Bold--to whom the province of Artois and its capital
of Arras belonged, assured the commercial future of Arras during the 14th
and 15th centuries by ordering their richest tapestries from workshops
there. The only surviving documented work of the earlier period of Arras is
the Saint Piat and Saint Eleuthere series presented to the Cathedral of
Tournai in 1402. By the mid-15th century, Tournai had begun to replace
Arras as a center of Burgundian patronage: from Pasquier Grenier, one of
Tournai's master weavers, Philip the Good purchased (1459) a series of
tapestries representing the Story of Alexander the Great (Galleria Doria
Pamphili, Rome).

During the 16th and early 17th centuries, Brussels became the capital of
European tapestry production with large factories established by Pieter van
Aelst and Pieter Pannemaker. Among the Flemish weavers' great and noble
clients were the Austrian Habsburgs, Sigismund II of Poland, and Pope Leo
X, for whom van Aelst wove the Acts of the Apostles (1515-19; Victoria and
Albert Museum), after cartoons by Raphael for the Sistine Chapel. With
this series he introduced the Italian Renaissance style and the practice of
copying paintings to European tapestry design.

Widely admired, Flemish weavers established workshops throughout

Europe during the 16th and 17th centuries. At Ferrara, Italy, Jan and
Nicolaus Carcher served Ercole II d'Este; Jan Rost, Nicolaus Carcher, and
Jan van der Straet (Stradanus) supervised the tapestry workshop in
Florence of Cosimo I de'Medici. The first series woven on the Florentine
looms was the History of Joseph (1547-50; Palazzo Vecchio, Florence),
designed by the Mannerist painter Angelo Bronzino. In the late 16th
century Josse Jean Lanckeert and Frans Spierincx moved to Delft, the
Netherlands, from Antwerp, Belgium; at about the same time Flemish
weavers established workshops in Germany--at Stuttgart (Jakob de
Carmes), Frankenthal (Pierre de Waeyere and Everard Van Orley), and
Munich (Jan van der Biest). In 1620 a royal tapestry factory was
established at Mortlake, England, with Josse Ampe of Bruges, Belgium, in
charge of chiefly Flemish workers and weavers.

These provincial manufacturing centers did not (and could not) compete
with the French royal factories founded by Louis XIV at GOBELINS (1662),
Beauvais (1664), and AUBUSSON (1665). These factories dominated
European production for nearly two centuries with tapestry series designed
by France's greatest painters, including Charles Le Brun, Jean Baptiste
Oudry, and Francois CBoucher; the last two worked both for Gobelins and
Beauvais. Among the series Oudry designed for Beauvais were The New
Indian Hunts (1727), Country Pleasures (1730), and Fine Verdures (1736);
for the same factory Boucher designed Village Festivals (1736), The Story
of Psyche (1741), and Loves of the Gods (1749). During the 19th century,
when tapestries were in less demand for wall hangings, Beauvais
specialized in furniture covers, as Aubusson had since the 18th century
(such as the covers with Oudry's scenes from the Fables of La Fontaine).
When Beauvais was amalgamated with Gobelins in 1940, Aubusson
became the major center for tapestry design and production in the 20th
century--thanks to Jean Lurcat, who settled there for the purpose of
creating a new tapestry industry at the request of the French Ministry of
National Ed Cucation in 1939. In 1945, Lurcat, with the artists Marc Saint-
Saens and Jean Picart Le Doux, founded the Association of Tapestry
Cartoon-Painters, which pioneered the revival of tapestry as modern
architectural decoration, according to the principle that tapestries should
be original works of art (not copies after paintings), intended for walls and
designed for specific architectural spaces. Reviewed by KATHRYN
B.Hiesinger

Bibliography:

Ackerman, Phyllis, Tapestry, The Mirror of Civilization (1933; repr. 1970);

Bennett, Anna, Five Centuries of Tapestry (1976); Franses, Jack, Tapestries
and Their Mythology (1973); Florisoone, Michel, et al., The Book of
Tapestry: History and Technique (1978); Jobe, Joseph, ed., The Art of
Tapestry (1965); Thomson, W. G., A History of Tapestry (1930); Weigert,
R. A., French Tapestry (1963).

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