Techniques

Tapestry is first of all a technique. It differs from other forms of patterned weaving in that no weft threads are carried the full width of the fabric web, except by an occasional accident of design. Each unit of the pattern or the background is woven with a weft, or thread of the required colour, that is inserted back and forth only over the section where that colour appears in the design or cartoon. As in the weaving of plain cloth, the weft threads pass over and under the warp threads alternately and on the return go under where before it was over and vice versa. Each passage is called a pick, and when completed the wefts are pushed tightly together by various devices (awl, reed, batten, comb, or serrated fingernails in Japan). The weft threads so outnumber the warps that they conceal them completely. The warps in a finished tapestry appear only as more or less marked parallel ridges in the texture, or grain of the fabric, according to their coarseness or fineness.

The thickness of the warp influences the thickness of the tapestry fabric. In Europe during the Middle Ages, the thickness of the wool tapestry fabric in such works as the 14th-century Angers Apocalypse tapestry was about 10 to 12 threads to the inch (5 to the centimetre). By the 16th century the tapestry grain had gradually become finer as tapestry more closely imitated painting. Known for the regularity and distinctness of its tapestries, the royal French tapestry factory in Paris known as the Gobelins used 15 to 18 threads per inch (6 to 7 per centimetre) in the 17th century and 18 to 20 (7 to 8) in the 18th century. Another royal factory of the French monarchy at Beauvais had as many as 25 or even 40 threads per inch (10 to 16 per centimetre) in the 19th century. These excessively fine grains make the fabric very flat and regular, tending to imitate the canvas of a painting. The grain of 20th-century tapestry approximated that used in 14th- and 15th-century tapestry. The Gobelins factory, for instance, used 12 or 15 threads per inch (5 or 6 per centimetre).

In many 20th-century tapestries a finer grain was contrasted with the effects of a heavier weave. The grain of silk tapestries, of course, is much finer than those made of wool. It is not uncommon for the silk tapestries of China to have as many as 60 warp threads per inch (about 24 per centimetre).

Where the weft margin of a colour area is straight and parallel to the warps, it forms a kind of slit, or relais, which may be treated in any of five different ways. First, it may simply be left open, as in Chinese silk tapestries, which are called kesi (cut silk) for that reason. Second, it may be left open on the loom but sewed up afterward, as in European tapestries from the 14th to the 17th centuries and also in some later types. Third, the weaver may dovetail his wefts, passing from one side and from the other in turn over a common warp. This may be either “comb” dovetailing—single wefts alternating—or “sawtooth” dovetailing—clusters first from one side, next from the other. Dovetailing has the double disadvantage of making the fabric heavier at that point and of blurring the outline. Persian weavers of the 16th century developed a successful variant in silk tapestry rugs whereby a black outline weft was dovetailed over two warps—one of each of the adjacent colour areas—effectively hiding the coloured wefts in the compacting of the weave and providing a strong clear image. The same device is found in pre-Columbian Peru.

The fourth treatment—interlocking—was introduced in the Gobelins factory in the 18th century. Here wefts of juxtaposed colour segments are looped through each other between the two warps that mark, respectively, the margin of each colour. This technique produces a continuous surface of even weight that was prized by the French weavers because the resultant effect more closely approximated that of painting.

A curious variant of these weaving techniques is achieved when between every two rows of wefts there is a weft that runs the full width of the tapestry, thereby making the fabric solid. This technique, if strictly classified, would be called brocade weaving, but the principle is that of tapestry, with the cloth insert subordinate. Rarely used, the technique was employed in Japan in the 7th and 8th centuries, in eastern Persia in the 10th century, and in pre-Columbian Peru.

Instead of the plain-cloth method of weaving usually used in making tapestries, a twill technique can be used. In this type of weave the weft is floated over two or more warps, then under one or more warps, with this underpassage shifting always one to the right or left, thereby making a diagonal ribbing. As far as can be determined, this technique first appeared in medieval Persia and from the 17th century on was especially used in the Iranian provinces of Khorāsān and Kermān to make shawls of goat’s hair or wool. It is also used to make the famed Kashmir shawls and, along with many other crafts, was probably introduced into Kashmir from Persia, in the 16th century. In contemporary European tapestries this technique, usually called eccentric weaving, occasionally has been used in making some of the experimental abstract hangings of the later 20th century.

European tapestry may be woven on either a vertical loom (high-warp, or haute-lisse in French) or a horizontal loom (low-warp, or basse-lisse). In early high-warp looms the warps were attached to a beam at the top, and groups of warp threads were weighted at the bottom. The weft was beaten up (i.e., pushed) toward the top as the weaving progressed. High-warp looms of this type are pictured on ancient Greek vases. In later high-warp looms the vertical frame has heavy uprights holding a horizontal roller at top and bottom, on which the warps are stretched. Each warp passes through a loop of cord (the lisses), and the loops encircling the warps that correspond to uneven numbers are fastened to one slender cylinder; those to the even-numbered warps are fastened to another cylinder. Both cylinders are above the weaver but within reach so that he can pull forward first with one, then with the other set of warps (i.e., form the shed) in order to pass his bobbin behind them. The bobbin (broche) is a short, pointed, slim cylinder of polished wood on which the weft yarn is wound.

The low-warp loom, on the other hand, has the rollers on the same level at table height so that the warps stretched between them are horizontal. To leave the weaver’s hands free, the warps are attached to two slats, or poles, each of which is connected with a treadle so that the weaver’s foot depresses the odd-numbered or even-numbered series of warps to form a passageway for the bobbin, called a shuttle on the low-warp loom. The cylinders in both instances serve to roll up the finished portion and unroll a further length of unwoven warps so that the section in process is always taut and in a convenient relation to the weaver. At both types of loom the weaver works from the back side, that is, he weaves the tapestry on the wrong side. He has, however, a hand mirror, which he puts through the unwoven warps holding it to reflect the right side of the portion in process. While the high-warp weaver can examine his finished work directly by walking around to the other side of his loom, the low-warp worker has to tilt up his frame.

Of the two techniques, low-warp is more commonly used. Of the great European tapestry works only one, Gobelins, has traditionally used high-warp looms. Several weavers can work simultaneously on either kind of loom. Depending on the complexity of the design and the grain or thickness of the tapestry texture, a 20th-century weaver at the Gobelins could produce 32 to 75 square feet (3 to 7 square metres) a year.

In Western tapestry the medieval cartoon, or preparatory drawing, was usually traced and coloured by a painter on a canvas the size of the tapestry to be woven. At the end of the 15th century the weaver probably wove directly from a model, such as a painting, and consequently copied not a diagrammatic pattern but the original finished work of the painter. At the beginning of the 17th century there arose a clear distinction between the model and the cartoon. The model was the original reference on which the cartoon was based. Cartoons were rapidly and freely used and were often copied.

More than one tapestry can be woven from a cartoon. At the Gobelins factory, for instance, the 17th-century “Indies” tapestry set was woven eight times, remade, and slightly altered by the late Baroque painter François Desportes (1661–1743); these cartoons were woven several more times during the 18th century.

The border of a cartoon tended to be redesigned every time it was commissioned, since each patron would have a different heraldic device or personal preference for ornamental motifs. Borders were frequently designed by an artist different from the one who conceived the cartoon for the central narrative or principal image. As an element of tapestry design, however, borders or frames were important in European tapestry only from the 16th to the 19th century. This device was seldom used before the 16th century or after the 19th, largely because the notion of tapestry as a reproduction of or substitute for a painting was most popular in those four centuries.

A fully painted cartoon requires much of the painter’s time and is tedious to make. Beginning in the 20th century, other solutions were adopted. The cartoon may be a photographic enlargement of a fully painted model or, more simply, a numbered diagrammatic drawing. The latter type of cartoon was worked out by the famous French tapestry designer Jean Lurçat during World War II. In this method each number corresponds to a precise colour and each cartoonist has his own range of colours. The colours are not indicated in a photographic enlargement, but the weaver refers to a small colour model provided by the painter and from it makes a selection of wool samples.

The high-warp weaver has the full-size cartoon, which he follows as it hangs beside or behind him. The low-warp worker has the cartoon laid under the warps, so he follows it from immediately above. In both cases the main outlines are drawn with ink on the warps after they have been mounted, or attached to the loom. The design is executed, in all European work since the Middle Ages, at right angles to the loom, so that in the finished hanging the warps usually run horizontally rather than vertically as they ran on the loom. Though in certain pieces the warps run vertically, it is aesthetically advantageous for the tapestries to be executed horizontally, since the warp ribbing tends to create a texture more or less reinforced by linear shadows, which, if vertical, sever the design but if horizontal bind it into continuity. Practically, however, horizontal warps are disadvantageous, since the horizontal slits made in weaving will pull apart more rapidly than vertical slits because of the weight of the hanging.