Textiles were used as markers of distinction throughout the Middle Ages and their production was of great economic importance to emerging and established polities. This book explores tapestry in one of the greatest textile producing regions, the Burgundian Dominions, c.1363-1477. It uses documentary evidence to reconstruct and analyse the production, manufacture, and use of tapestry. It begins by identifying the suppliers of tapestry to the dukes of Burgundy and their ability to spin webs between city and court. It proceeds by considering the forms of tapestry and their functions for urban and courtly consumers. It then observes the ways in which tapestry constructed social relations as part of gift-giving strategies. It concludes by exploring what the re-use, repair, and remaking of tapestry reveals about its value to urban and courtly consumers. By taking an object-centred approach through documentary sources, this book emphasises that the particular characteristics of tapestry shaped the strategies of those who supplied it and the ways it performed and constructed social relations. Thus, the book offers a contribution to the historical understanding of textiles as objects that contributed to the projection of social status and the cultural construction of political authority in the Burgundian polity.
Learn about the beautiful creations made using threads and fibers. Artists use techniques such as weaving to make amazing pieces of art called Tapestry.
Figured Tapestry is a study of industrial maturity and decline, focused on the Philadelphia textile trades from the era of the Knights of Labor through World War II. Unlike the bulk fabric enterprises of New England and the South, Quaker City textile firms were 'flexible specialists,' combining skilled labor, versatile technologies, and quick responsiveness to demand shifts to create a vast array of seasonal goods. Scranton assesses the significance and limits of industrial versatility, owner-operated businesses, craft labor and its organizations, and the agglomeration of specialist mills in urban districts. An interdisciplinary blend of business, labor, urban, and economic history, industrial geography, and the history of technology, Figured Tapestry illuminates the hidden world of batch production, the 'other side' of American industrialization, and highlights both the benefits and the hazards of flexibility, a matter of moment to those who seek to reorient current manufacturing away from the rigidities of mass production.
French Tapestries and Textiles is a survey of the Getty Museum's seventeenth- and eighteenth-century French textiles—one of the world's finest collections. Featuring twenty-five extraordinary tapestries woven at the Gobelins and Beauvais manufactories, the catalogue also highlights three carpets, two knotted-pile screens, and two sets of embroidered bed hangings, one of which is the only complete lit à la duchesse surviving from the period. Among the magnificent textiles discussed in this lavish volume are the Emperor of China tapestry series, the whimsical Story of Don Quixote, and Boucher's cycle The Story of Psyche. A gatefold in the book opens to reveal a photograph of the stately twenty-nine-foot carpet commissioned for Louis XIV's Galerie du Bord de l'Eau at the Louvre, a piece never publicly displayed in this century. Each entry includes a listing of artists and weavers, date and place of manufacture, and materials and techniques used, followed by a complete description and a condition statement. The accompanying commentary provides information on the literary, historical, and visual source of design imagery as well as the context of the textile's commission and production. In addition, each textile shown has a complete provenance, exhibition history, and bibliography. For lovers of French decorative arts and connoisseurs of textiles, this book offers a study both of the art of tapestry- and textile-making and of the aesthetic tradition exemplified by these remarkable objects.
Tapestries were among the most prestigious of art forms, created for the mightiest in the land and valued for centuries. Despite its illustrious history, tapestry weaving is actually a simple technique that requires little equipment or expenditure, and can be done anywhere. Written by a prominent tapestry weaver, this lavishly illustrated book gently leads you through the whole process with detailed diagrams and exciting work by contemporary weavers. It will be useful to the absolute beginner, but experienced weavers will also find new ideas and techniques to tempt and inspire them. The book includes a step-by-step guide to setting up a small frame loom and starting to weave; basic and more advanced techniques, and how to create shapes and textures; advice on taking your work into the third dimension, whether bas relief or fully sculptural; information on the qualities of different materials and how they can be used to create the effects you want; and design ideas for tapestry and how to follow supplied designs. This will be an essential source book for experienced and novice weavers, and is beautifully illustrated with 190 colour illustrations and diagrams.
Arras Hanging: The Textile That Determined Early Modern Literature and Drama reveals that early modern writers aspired to produce narratives that replicated the structure and aesthetic of high-quality Renaissance tapestries in order to appeal to their audiences’ desire for a “hands-on” and idiosyncratic narrative experience.
This volume includes concise, illustrated entries on the more than 450 examples of furniture, porcelain, and silver from the Museum's collection. New to this expanded edition are sections devoted to maiolica and glass. An index of previous owners and updated bibliographies are of particular help to the scholar.