Tapestry

tapestry, 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 21st 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.