Ancient Uses Of Tapestries

Summary: Generally large size looms have been used to weave tapestries on. Many types of threads have been used to produce laces like gold, silk and silver threads weaving several pictures of subjects together with those of the peasant scenes after Teniers, Biblical history, mythology, etc. Tapestries have been used as wall hangings but unlike needlework, it was woven on a loom. It was also formed in proportions much larger than would usually be used in hand-stitched embroidery; tapes...

Generally large size looms have been used to weave tapestries on. Many types of threads have been used to produce laces like gold, silk and silver threads weaving several pictures of subjects together with those of the peasant scenes after Teniers, Biblical history, mythology, etc. Tapestries have been used as wall hangings but unlike needlework, it was woven on a loom. It was also formed in proportions much larger than would usually be used in hand-stitched embroidery; tapestry panels ranging from ten or twelve feet in height and twenty feet long are pretty common. The chief medium was wool, but in special cases silk was also used. In some of the finest works the use of gold and silver can be seen. The primary heart of tapestry weaving from the year 1500 has been Brussels. But the outputs over the years have immensely varied in quality. Biblical and Roman history, peasant, mythology and scenes ensuing Teniers were some of the subjects. Most seventeenth-and eighteenth-century works are let down by the truth that throughout the years a murky brownish image has faded their red dyes. Brussels tapestries mostly hold a mark with a shield with the letter 'B' on either side. At times weavers add their names or initials, in the work. There were two major factories in France. Both the Gobelins and Beauvais were rooted in the second half of the seventeenth century. While the former was a private concern with State support, the latter was a Royal factory and it was only in the late eighteenth century when one could buy any of its productions. Though both did work of the utmost quality, Beauvais was mainly celebrated for a series of panels established on the Fables of La Fontaine, and for various sets of settee covers and chairs. The former was also made at Gobelins, where around 1775 they made beautiful and exemplary sets of furniture covers and matching wall hangings. Example of these types of decorative harmony is to be seen in a room designed by Robert Adam, remains at Osterley Park, near London. A set of furniture (shorn of its wall-hangings but even now intact Gobelins covers) made for Moor Park in Hertfordshire, is housed in the Museum of Art in Philadelphia. A small amount of of these rich ensembles are intact even now, but a collection of tapestries that had been made for a store at Croome Park in Warwickshire has been sold off for a sum of