Tapestries

Picture: Captive Unicorn, Red.

Tapestries have been woven for hundreds of years in diverse cultures. Both ancient Egyptians and the Incas buried their dead in tapestry woven clothing. Important civic buildings of the Greek Empire, including the Parthenon, had walls covered by them. However it was the French medieval weavers who brought the craft to fruition.

Antique specimens of tapestry weaving include a few surviving from Egypt of 1500 BC and Coptic tapestries made from the 4th to 8th cent. AD The Incas of Peru produced beautiful specimens, some of which date back to the pre-Columbian era. Ancient Chinese tapestries, were made of light, thin silks, often interwoven with gold thread. Allusions in early Greek poetry and paintings on Greek vases show that tapestry weaving was an important household industry.

In the 13th and 14th centuries the Church recognized the value of tapestries in illustrating Bible stories to its illiterate congregations. Few of these have survived. The oldest existing set is the Apocalypse of St John, six hangings 18 foot high, totaling 471 foot in length which were woven from 1375 to 1379 in Paris. This was the centre of production until the Hundred Years War (1337 - 1453) caused the weavers to flee north via Arras to Flanders (now Belgium and northern France).

By the 15th century, tapestry weaving had reached a high degree of perfection, and from this century date many great Gothic sets rich with gold thread. A late 15th-century example of a verdure background is the Lady and the Unicorn set (Musée de Cluny). An example of the Renaissance period is the widely acclaimed set, the Acts of the Apostles, from the cartoons of Raphael. The baroque style dominated the 17th cent.; the rococo and classical styles appeared in the 18th cent. Fine examples were woven from the cartoons of François Boucher, who worked both for the Beauvais and the Gobelins looms.

In England much tapestry, known as Arras, was used before any was manufactured there. An establishment in imitation of the Gobelins was opened at Mortlake in 1619 and employed Flemish weavers. In 1881, William Morris began weaving at Merton; his friend Edward Burne-Jones designed some of Morris's series. In 1893 tapestry looms were set up in New York City.

Important public collections in the United States that contain fine examples of tapestry weaving are those in the Metropolitan Museum (including the magnificent Hunt of the Unicorn series at the Cloisters) and in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

William Morris March 24,1834 - October 3,1896 was an English artist, writer, socialist and activist. He was one of the principal founders of the British arts and crafts movements. best known as a designer of wallpaper and patterned fabrics, a writer of poetry and fiction and a pioneer of the socialist movement in Britain.

Morris left Oxford to join an architecture firm, but soon found himself drawn more and more to the decorative arts. He and Webb built Red House at BexleyHealth in Kent, Morris's wedding gift to Jane. It was here his design ideas began to take physical shape. (In honour of his connection with Bexleyheath, a bust of Morris was added to an original niche in the brick clock tower in the town centre in 1996.) He also built Standen House in Sussex along with Webb.

In 1861, he founded the firm of Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. with Gabriel Rossetti, Burne-Jones, Ford Madox Brown and Philip Webb. In 1874 Rossetti and Ford Madox Brown decided to leave the firm, requiring a return on their shares which proved to be a costly business. Throughout his life, he continued to work in his own firm, although the firm changed names. Its most famous incarnation was as Morris and Co. The company encouraged the revival of traditional crafts such as stained glass painting, and Morris himself single-handedly recreated the art of tapestry weaving in Britain.

Picture: William Morris - Rose Bowl.