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Tapestry is woven on a loom with several bobbins each used to insert its yarn in the area where the pattern requires that particular colour; it thus permits of a free, non-repeating design and unlimited colour. In the simplest tapestries the warps are vertical in relation to the design, but European weavers almost always rendered the design at right angles on the loom so that the warps would run horizontally when the panel was hung. The earliest known tapestries were found in Egyptian tombs of the 2nd millennium B. C. All textile material is scarce until the early centuries of the Christian era. Examples of silk tapestry survive from the Han period in China; and Chinese weavers settled in Japan and introduced the art there during the 3rd and 4th centuries A. D.
Numerous examples of Near Eastern tapestry dating from the 4th and 5th centuries A. D. have been found in Egyptian burial grounds. The bulk of these pieces are fragments from tunics, cloaks, cushion covers and wall hangings woven with wool and linen wefts. After the Islamic conquest, silk was commonly used. Pre-Islamic Near Eastern designs comprise strapwork, plant forms and human and animal figures derived from the popular eschatological cults. During the Islamic period the patterns consisted of small hexagons, lions or water birds, strap patterns and calligraphy arranged in bands or medallions. Traditional forms of tapestry are still being made in the Near and Middle East, mostly with geometric patterns or stylized plant patterns.
Tapestry was certainly woven in Europe by the 12th century.
The oldest extant example is the 12th-century Halberstadt Apostle tapestry, but this shows imperfect control of the medium. The first examples of a fully evolved professional European tapestry art are the tapestries woven at Arras for Charles the Bold and the remnants of the great Apocalypse Series of Angers Cathedral, the work of Paris weavers of the 14th century, based on cartoons by Jean de Bruges. At the beginning of the 15th century the focus of the industry shifted from France to the Low Countries, to Tournai, Bruges, Antwerp and Brussels.
The famous Apostle series was designed by Raphael and woven by Pieter van Aelst of Brussels. Purely decorative elements were now relegated to the borders while the main part of the tapestry more and more resembled a painting. Bernard van Orley successfully combined the decorative and the narrative elements of the 16th-century style in the 'Hunts of Maximilian' with their backgrounds of scrolling foliation of acanthus inspiration accompanying birds, butterflies, hounds and lions.
In the course of the 16th century, weavers dispersed from Brussels and Antwerp to many other European cities, and workshops were set up in England (Sheldon works, c. 1560, noted for tapestry maps), in Sweden, at Fontainebleau, Ferrara and later in Paris. Each developed its own style, but all were dominated by the monumental classical ideal which reached its climax in the work of Rubens. Important new centres were founded in England and France during the 17th century: at Mortlake in England ( 1619), where Lowland influence remained strong; and, in France, in Paris ( 1667) in a factory built by the Gobelin family after whom the organization was named, at Beauvais ( 1664) and at Aubusson ( 1665).
Leading painters designed cartoons for these factories, among them Charles Lebrun, Claude Audran le Jeune, Antoine and Charles Coypel, J. B. Oudry, Boucher, Jean Berain and François Desportes. The 18th century again witnessed a dispersal of weavers, both Flemish and French, and looms were set up at Madrid -- celebrated for the translation of cartoons by Goya, -- St Petersburg and Naples.
During the 19th century, with the advent of the machine, the art of tapestry declined. William Morris made an attempt to revive hand weaving and established the Merton Abbey looms in 1887, where cartoons by the Pre-Raphaelite painters were executed. The art has been revived in Paris with Lurçat as the principal designer, and many contemporary painters have also worked specially for this medium.
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