Many years ago I fell in love with tapestries, and that initiated a long road of learning and discovery, peppered with my share of mistakes along the way. Hopefully this simplified guide will help you distinguish between the different types of tapestries and allow you to find exactly what you´re looking for.

To be precise we should start from the very beginning, and that is the design. Before a tapestry is created a painter or draftsman creates the design in paint on canvas, fabric or paper; from the 1500´s onward the two arts of painting and weaving were directly connected. The creation of a tapestry depended on the work of a team of individuals. Firstly a painter would create the design, he was called a "peintre cartonnier" (cartoon painter). The painter would first create a general impression, and then break up his drawing into fields, like drawing a cartoon, outlining figures and configuring a palate. This was done to simplify the weaving process. The second contributor to the creation of a tapestry was the dyer. The dyer would take raw wool and tint it, to approximate it as much as possible to the original artwork. And last, but definitely not least, there was the weaver who translated the design from painting into tapestry.  A skilled weaver could make a tapestry nearly as fine as a painting.

We can break tapestries up into three major groups:

I. Handwoven

II. Mechanically Woven

III. Painted/Serigraphed

HANDWOVEN:

Aubusson Loom Used for Handweaving

The handwoven pieces are what what is generally called a "True Tapestry", that doesn´t mean that all handwoven pieces are good, or even old, simply that they were done by hand. China has, in the past 20 years, become a major hub of tapestry reproductions. Although some dealers try to pass Chinese pieces off as old, they are fairly easy to distinguish from older European pieces. Go straight to the foliage, or faces and you will find somewhat jagged and angular stitching, with an effect that looks like pixelation. European tapestries, even the lower quality pieces have a roundness to the designs, which is an extremely time consuming process.

Modern Reproduction 1  (notice jagged leafage)

 Modern Reproduction 2 (notice 2 dimensional faces)

In the realm of the handwoven we have a variety of different types of tapestries. The main European production was in the Pays Flamand, a region which encompassed the north of France, Belgium and part of Holland. These tapestries are called Flemish. Flemish tapestries exist in every quality, from extremely fine, to rough; The designs also range from extremely detailed to almost cartoonesque.(see pictures below). That doesn´t necessarily mean a cartoonesque tapestry is lower quality than a detailed one, because like Naïf art and Americana, there are collector´s that focus specifically on these pieces and that means their prices can parallel the very fine detailed tapestries.

18th Century Flemish Fine Verdure      

18th Century French Cartoonesque Border

The Aubusson area of France became famous for its tapestries in the 16th and 17th centuries. They took the Flemish techniques and applied to them a very French sense of style and colors. Aubusson tapestries range from the Verdure (Greenery), practically indestinguishable from the Flemish verdure, to the extremely delicate pastel colored allegories based on paintings (called tapestry cartoons) by painters like Goya, Huet or Julliard.(see picture directly below)

                     18th Century Aubusson tapestry depicting one of de la Fontaine´s Fables

Dating Flemish & French tapestries is moreso of an art than a science. If a piece is based on a painting, that gives the valuer a start date, but not necessarily an end date. In some cases one may find a series of tapestries based on the same painting, made as far as more than a century apart. Comparing the stitching/weaving style and the particular color choices will in most cases help the valuer narrow down the age of a tapestry. Comparison is the number one method used by experts to estimate the age and origin of a tapestry.

to be continued

Handwoven Variations:

Needlepoint Embroidery: Another technique used for tapestry creation is the Needlepoint Embroidery; although a completely different technique altogether, they are also entirely hand made. The main difference with the needlepoint is that it is done on a canvas. In the case of antique high quality needlepoints, the designs were first painted onto a netting like fabric, and the embroiderer would then stitch over that. Like most techniques it developed, first the hand painting was substituted by stencilled designs, and in the 20th century by mass printed designs.

For more examples see Introduction to Tapestries-Pictorial Guide

II. MECHANICALLY WOVEN

In the early 19th century, specifically in 1801, Monsieur Joseph Marie Jacquard invented what is known as the Jacquard Loom.

 Jacquard Loom

This revolutionary machine changed the world of tapestry and textile creation. With a series of punch cards, manipulated by the artisan, he could now stitch more precisely than ever before. The weaver was able to create unique designs simply by changing the punch card in the machine. He could make trees bigger, add more leaves, an extra bird. In a sense it was like the first version of photoshop. This means there are some quite high quality mechanically woven tapestries, which are unique in their general design, although not unique in detail- so you might find exactly the same bird, made from the same punch card on a number of completely different tapestries. Directly below, one can observe (on the left)a late 19th century Aubusson style verdure with a very attractive autumnal color palate, and to the right a Napoleon III period verdure with a traditional blues & greens color palate. Both pieces are mechanically woven.

to be continued

III: Painted Tapestries

Although not technically a tapestry, paintings on woven fabric are a technique as old as weaving itself. There is a vast amount of evidence that shows that during medieval times, painted flags, banners and tapestries were extremely popular. First they were used for military and religious purposes and then with the popularization of heraldry they moved into the domestic realm. At the funeral of Adolf of Cleves, four men bore painted banners representing his title and rank, and Henry the 5th ordered that 90 banners be painted for the procession to Thomas Beckett´s tomb, each one representing the herladic arms of all the kings of Christendom.

For some examples see Introduction to Tapestries-Pictorial Guide

to be continued