European Wall Tapestries – History, Then Let’s Go Shopping.
“Tapestry” is derived from the Greek word “tapetion” and pieces of Greek tapestries were found are from the 3rd century B.C. In the Egyptian paintings 3000 B.C. show weavers at work on large looms similar to those used to make rugs. Temporarily this ancient art form died out as a part of Western culture and did not re-emerge until the 8th century. It was the Moors from Spain that reintroduced this wonderful textile art to Europe. From Spain, this industry spread to France and to the Netherlands and both became major centers for the production of European tapestries.
European tapestries of the Medieval and Renaissance periods were created mainly to adorn castles and cathedrals. These hangings were generally large, highly decorative works but they served a practical purpose as well. They could be used to create privacy, insulate drafty areas near windows and doors, even to reconfigure large spaces as temporary walls. The flexible nature of their construction made them easy to transport from place to place or to roll up and store until needed. Tapestries commissioned by the royalty of the time depicted scenes from tournaments, hunts and victorious battles. As one would expect, Biblical themes and scenes were represented in the majority of tapestries for churches and cathedrals. Often a whole set of such tapestries would be created. They provided a powerful visual medium in a time when much of the populace was illiterate.
Workshops were the center of European tapestry production. Depending on their size, they could employ people from one town or from an entire region. Tapestry weavers required a high degree of skill and had to serve a long apprenticeships with master weavers. As a result, a guild of weavers grew up to serve the workshops. Most of the workers in these workshops were related by blood or marriage and carried the artisan tradition from generation to generation. Some tapestry factories, such as the legendary Manufacture des Gobelins in Paris, were created by royalty to serve their specific needs. In the case of Gobelins, Louis VIV, the Sun King, had it created solely to furnish his court with tapestries, mainly depicting own image.
European tapestry production came into its finest era between the years 1500 and 1750. A weaver in the Middle Ages working on a tapestry could feel free to interpret the working sketch and inject his own sensibilities. In the 16th century, however, all such license had been banished. Tapestry production was a tightly controlled, regimented process. A working sketch, or “cartoon”, frequently took the form of an oil painting painted by a master. A prime example of this is the set of ten tapestries known as the Acts of the Apostles, which hang in the Sistine Chapel. The cartoons were painted by Rafael and exactingly copied by the weavers. Few actual paintings can equal the beauty and detail of these tapestries.
European tapestry industry was influenced by the events of the times. A great disturbance of the once center of tapestry production was the Netherlands’ war for independence from Spain called the Eighty Years War from 1568 to 1648 disrupted this industry, causing many artists and weavers to flee to other places with greater safty, like Britain, Italy and France. Later on the new workshops were put together by Flemmish immigrants who expanded and improved tapestry manufacture in these countries. Cosimo de’ Medici of Florence, Italy followed the lead of Louis XIV and commissioned many fine hangings for display in royal settings.
After the war, the Brussels-based Flemish tapestry industry made a strong comeback and was soon back to creating their renowned textile art. However, they no longer dominated the market. Tapestries of equal quality were now being manufactured in several other centers such as Paris. However, the revolutionary war in France (1789-1799) almost wiped out that country’s tapestry production industry. With no king and virtually no aristocracy, the tapestry producers found themselves with few clients. Also, tapestries had become symbols of the hated former regime and targets for destruction. As was customary, many European tapestries had been made with gold and other metals. They were now burned in order to reclaim these materials which then could be used as a medium of exchange, as with gold, or even to make ammunition.
The fashion for European tapestries remained strong throughout the rest of Europe during the first part of the eighteenth century. Although production was dominated by the large commercial endeavors in Netherlands and France, the courts of Peter the Great in St. Petersburg and Philip V in Madrid established new workshops at this time. Enterprises in Germany and Italy flourished under royal patronage as well. However, the growing middle class created a demand for less costly tapestries. In response, the manufacture of coarser and, thereby, more affordable tapestries increased at workshops like Aubusson in France. Many, like Aubusson, specialized in adapting the tapestry designs by the masters of the day, such as Boucher, for more modest homes.
Toward the end of the eighteenth century, the trend in interior design turned increasingly toward smaller, more affordable elements such as paneling, drapes, painting, mirrors and furniture. Deemed cumbersome and costly, tapestries began to rapidly decline in popularity. As a result, production at the royal tapestry workshops in Netherlands and France declined sharply. By the end of the eighteenth century, production of traditional European tapestries was teetering on the brink of extinction. In England, a national effort was made to save their tapestry industry, to no avail. As the nineteenth century came to a close, tapestry manufacture had come to almost a complete halt.
The twentieth century brought the Industrial Revolution. Ironically, the mechanization of European tapestry production indirectly brought about its salvation. In the late nineteenth century, a group of artists associated with the Arts and Crafts movement in England recognized the need to revivify the craft of tapestry production. Their leader and best-known member, William Morris, started a tapestry factory at Merton Abbey near London. There tapestries were produced from the cartoons of Morris and painter William Crane but mostly from the designs of painter Sir Edward Burne-Jones. It was the French painter Jean Lurat, however, who ushered in the true modern tapestry renaissance. Many well known modern artists such as Picasso, Braque and Mir had allowed their works to be reproduced as tapestry. Lurat, however, championed the ancient collaboration between artist and weaver and tapestry as an art form in its own right, not as a sublimation of painting. He is widely credited with helping tapestry survive to become the thriving art form it is today.