Tapestry is a form of textile art, traditionally woven by hand on a loom. Tapestry is weft-faced weaving, in which all the warp threads are hidden in the completed work, unlike most woven textiles, where both the warp and the weft threads may be visible. In tapestry weaving, weft yarns are typically discontinuous (unlike brocade); the artisan interlaces each coloured weft back and forth in its own small pattern area. It is a plain weft-faced weave having weft threads of different colours worked over portions of the warp to form the design.
Tapestry is relatively fragile, and difficult to make, so most historical pieces are intended to hang vertically on a wall (or sometimes in tents), or sometimes horizontally over a piece of furniture such as a table or bed. Some periods made smaller pieces, often long and narrow and used as borders for other textiles. European tapestries are normally made to be seen only from one side, and often have a plain lining added on the back. However, other traditions, such as Chinese kesi and that of Pre-Columbian Peru, make tapestry to be seen from both sides. Most weavers use a natural warp thread, such as wool, linen or cotton. The weft threads are usually wool or cotton but may include silk, gold, silver, or other alternatives.
Tapestry Room from Croome Court, moved to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, hung with made to measure 18th-century Gobelins tapestries, also covering the chairs. 1763-71
Tapestry should be distinguished from the different technique of embroidery, although large pieces of embroidery with images are sometimes loosely called "tapestry", as with the famous Bayeux Tapestry, which is in fact embroidered. From the Middle Ages on European tapestries could be very large, with images containing dozens of figures. They were often made in sets, so that a whole room could be hung with them.
The Triumph of Fame, probably Brussels, 1500s
In late medieval Europe tapestry was the grandest and most expensive medium for figurative images in two dimensions, and despite the rapid rise in importance of painting it retained this position in the eyes of many Renaissance patrons until at least the end of the 16th century, if not beyond. The European tradition continued to develop and reflect wider changes in artistic styles until the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars, before being revived on a smaller scale in the 19th century.
La tapisserie est un tissu fabriqué sur un métier à tisser ou bien à la main, dont le tissage représente des motifs ornementaux1. Le tissage se compose de deux ensembles de fils entrelacés, ceux à la verticale, les fils de chaîne, et ceux à l'horizontale, les fils de trame1. Les fils de chaîne sont mis en place sous tension sur un métier, et le fil de trame est transmis par un mouvement mécanique de va-et-vient sur tout ou partie de l'ouvrage. Souvent la tapisserie est une réalisation textile décorative d'ameublement, se classant dans les arts décoratifs. La tenture murale d'une pièce peut être constituée d'une seule ou d'un ensemble de tapisseries2.
L'art de la tapisserie existe depuis l'Antiquité, et beaucoup de peuples l'ont pratiqué : Grèce antique, Chine impériale, Égypte antique, civilisations précolombiennes. La tapisserie occidentale connaît un essor formidable pendant le xive siècle, illustré par la tenture de l'Apocalypse commandée par le duc Louis Ier d'Anjou.
Un grand nombre de tapisseries sont parvenues jusqu'à nous directement. Elles sont parfois grandioses (tenture de La Dame à la licorne conservée au musée de Cluny, tenture de David et Bethsabée4 conservée à Écouen, tenture Les Chasses de Maximilien conservée au musée du Louvre), souvent plus modestes. Certaines tentures sont disponibles en plusieurs séries (tenture de l'Histoire du Roy dont une série complète se trouve au château de Versailles).
