derived from the French tapis, a carpet or table-cover (which comes from the Latin tapetum, a carpet, or covering for a bed or couch), is a name given to woven or embroidered fabrics, employed chiefly as linings or hangings on the walls of rooms or churches, and occasionally as ornamental coverings for articles of furniture, such as tables, couches, desks, &c.

Tapestry appears to be of Oriental origin. Its materials were silk and wool, dyed in brilliant colours; also flax, byssus, gold, and precious stones. Figures, landscapes, and various ornamental devices, were embroidered in the Tapestry, ancient tapestries, many of them apparently by hand. The embroidered curtains of the tabernacle, described in the book of Exodus, are supposed to have been worked with the needle in thread of silk, gold, or wool. Embroidery and other ornamental works were extensively practised among the Egyptians, and their figured cloths were made both by the needle and the loom. Respecting the latter, we are told that many patterns worked in colours by the loom were so richly composed that they vied with cloths embroidered by the needle. The Babylonians and other nations of antiquity were acquainted with this art, and made use of it to represent the mysteries of their religion, and also to celebrate historical events. The Greeks attributed the invention to Minerva. Shawls or hangings for the temples formed an important part of the gifts offered by devotees to heathen divinities. On these hangings the utmost care and skill were bestowed, and they were even celebrated by the poets. Thus, Euripides describes a shawl on which the sun, moon, and stars were represented, and which, with others containing hunting-pieces, &c., belonged to the temple of Apollo at Delphi, and was used to form a magnificent tent. In what way the precious metals, jewels, &c., were introduced into ancient tapestry, we are not clearly informed. In the 39th chapter of Exodus there are directions for beating gold into thin plates, and then cutting it into wires for the cunning work of the ephod; and it is thought probable that the gold thread used in Egyptian embroidery was made in the same manner, and rounded by the hammer, for no trace of wire-drawing has been discovered in the ancient accounts of working in metal.

The working of tapestry with the needle can be traced in France to the earliest times of the monarchy. When Clovis and his people embraced Christianity, not only were the churches adorned with rich tapestries, but the very streets were curtained with them. At that time, and down to the ninth century, they appear to have been fabricated entirely by hand; but at about the latter date the loom was introduced, and shared in the manufacture, which, however, was still largely carried on by the needle, and formed the employment of females in convents and elsewhere. In the two following centuries other parts of Europe produced fine embroideries; and those of England gradually became highly prized on the continent.

A great extension of the employment of tapestry took place in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, when it began to be applied to private use in the residences of the nobility, instead of being reserved, as heretofore, for the curtains, palls, altar-cloths, and vestments of churches and monasteries. The lofty walls of stone were no longer allowed to remain cold and naked, but were covered, often by the industry of the ladies of the family, with rich hangings, on which the heroic deeds of their ancestors were embroidered, with more or less dexterity, according to the skill of the draughtsmen in design, and of the needlewomen in execution. The taste for these household luxuries is said to have been introduced from the East in consequence of the increased intercourse occasioned by the crusades. The Oriental practice of covering walls with prepared and ornamented skins, united so as to form solid leather hangings, which not only resisted damp, but were capable of high ornamentation by means of gilding, seems to have suggested the use of tapestry for similar purposes, and thus to have led to a vast improvement in the domestic comfort of many a baronial dwelling. These solid and richly embroidered curtains must have saved the inmates from many a cold current of air, while their legends imparted an unwonted appearance of life and activity to the bare walls. The eastern origin of these wall-coverings may be traced in the name Sarazins or Sarazinois, formerly applied in France to the workmen engaged in their manufacture. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the Flemings, who had long been celebrated for their tapestries, carried the art to great perfection, and produced some of the finest specimens which had yet appeared. Guicciardini ascribed the invention of tapestry to Flanders; but this could only apply, if at all, to such as is produced by the loom, and embroidery by the loom appears only to have followed when the fingers became inadequate to meet the demand for a well-known and necessary article. Among the early manufactories of tapestry were those of Brussels, Arras, Antwerp, Lisle, Oudenarde, Tournay, Bruges, and Valenciennes. Those of Arras became highly celebrated; they were executed, as were most of the French tapestries, chiefly in wool, with a little hemp and cotton, but without silk or gold or silver thread. The richer and more costly kinds of tapestry were fabricated chiefly at Florence and Venice. In the sixteenth century, Francis I. established the celebrated manufacture of Fontainebleau, in which threads of gold and silver were introduced into the work; this manufacture was also patronised by his successor, Henry II., who brought Italian workers to further French art. In the following century, new edifices were erected for the tapestry weavers of Paris, and Flemish workmen were hired to assist them. But the work languished after the death of Henry IV. It was revived by Louis XIV., who founded a manufacture in premises which had been erected by celebrated dyers named Gobelin. The establishment was named Hotel Royal des Gobelins, and has attained a worldwide celebrity on account of the fine tapestries executed there—often from designs of Raphael, Giulio Romano, and other Italian painters. Le Brun was at one time chief director of the establishment, and many fine productions are from his designs. This manufacture continued to flourish until the time of the Revolution, when it greatly declined. It was subsequently revived under the government of Napoleon, but never regained its ancient fame. The works executed in it were thenceforth chiefly for the use of the royal palaces, and very few were presented for general sale.

Our great Exhibition of 1851 presented two fine specimens from this celebrated manufactory. Both were copies of well-known pictures; the one, of Raphael's fresco in the Farnesina, in which Psyche is represented carried through the air by genii, and bearing the vessel which, at the behest of Venus, she has brought from the nether world; the other, of Horace Vernet's picture of Ali Pasha, looking on at the massacre of the Mamelukes, who at his command were shot by his soldiers. In both these copies the general effect, as well as much of the feeling of the artists, were preserved to an extraordinary degree, considering that the process of copying was so purely mechanical.

Of the use of tapestry in England we have many brief indications in Anglo-Saxon times. Silken curtains embroidered in gold were fabricated for some of the dwellings of the nobility; and in the wonderful specimen of industry known as the Bayeux tapestry, we have an evidence of the use of linen tapestry worked with wool in the days of William the Conqueror. This piece of needlework is said to have been executed by his queen and her maidens in commemoration of the conquest of England, and to have been bestowed by Matilda herself on the cathedral of Bayeux, of which Odo, the Conqueror's brother, was bishop. At one time this piece of tapestry was annually hung up in the church, where it entirely surrounded the nave, and was so kept for eight days, when it was again carefully locked up. By order of Napoleon I., the Bayeux tapestry was exhibited in Paris in 1803, and in other large towns of France: it was then consigned, not to the cathedral, but to the municipality of Bayeux. It is 20 inches wide, and 214 feet long, and is divided into 72 compartments, each bearing a superscription in Latin. Tapestry hangings were introduced more generally in the time of Eleanor of Castile, and began to be employed also as a covering for floors. Tapestry. The rich tapestry of Elizabeth's time is noticed by poets and writers of the day, and indicates an abundance which could not have been supplied by the needle. And it appears that tapestry weaving had been introduced into England in the reign of Henry VIII., and was practised from that time with more or less success. A celebrated manufactory at Mortlake, in Surrey, produced superb hangings for the royal palaces, &c. These were hung up on frames by means of hooks, and often at some little distance from the walls, so that concealment behind the tapestry was quite possible. This arrangement facilitated the removal of one suit of tapestry and the substitution of another to suit particular occasions, such as a royal progress, when the tapestry was sometimes sent on and affixed to the walls for that special occasion. At a later period, tapestry shared in the improvements of weaving and dyeing, but became less characteristic and interesting as its peculiar use in recording family or historical events passed away.

Tapestry-work is distinguished by the workmen into two kinds, that of high and that of low warp (haute-lisse and basse-lisse); though the difference is rather in the manner of working than in the work itself, which is in effect the same in both; only the looms, and consequently the warps, are differently situated; those of the low warp being placed flat and parallel to the horizon, with the weaver in a sitting position, and those of the high warp erected perpendicularly, so that the weaver is in a standing position. The loom on which the high warp is wrought consists of four principal pieces, two long planks or cheeks of wood, and two thick rollers or beams. The planks are set upright, and the beams across them, one at the top and the other at the bottom, or about a foot distance from the ground. They have each their trunnions, by which they are suspended on the planks, and are turned with bars. In each roller is a groove, from one end to the other, capable of containing a long round piece of wood, fastened in it with hooks. The use of it is to fix the ends of the warp. The warp, which is a kind of worsted, or twisted woollen thread, is wound on the upper roller; and the work, as fast as woven, is wound on the lower. In the inside the planks, which are 7 or 8 feet high, 14 or 15 inches broad, and 3 or 4 thick, are holes pierced from top to bottom, in which are put thick pieces of iron, with hooks at one end serving to sustain the coat-stave. These pieces of iron have also holes pierced, by putting a pin in which the stave can be drawn nearer or set farther off; and thus the coats or threads are stretched or loosened at pleasure. The coat-stave is about three inches in diameter, and runs all the length of the loom. On this are fixed the coats or threads, which make the threads of the warp cross each other. It has much the same effect here as the spring-stave and tredles have in the common looms. The coats are little threads fastened to each thread of the warp with a kind of sliding knot, which forms a sort of mesh or ring. They serve to keep the warp open for the passage of broaches wound with silks, woollens, or other matters used in the piece of tapestry. In the last place, there is a number of small sticks of different lengths, but all about an inch in diameter, which the workman keeps by him in baskets, to serve to make the threads of the warp cross each other, by passing them across; and, that the threads thus crossed may retain their proper situation, a packthread is run among the threads above the stick. The loom being thus formed, and mounted with its warp, the first thing the workman does is to draw on the threads of this warp the principal lines and strokes of the design to be represented on the piece of tapestry; which is done by applying the cartoon or design to be copied to the back or wrong side of the warp, and drawing the pattern on the front of the warp, the threads of which are sufficiently open to allow Besides the loom, &c., here described, there are three other principal instruments required for working the silk or the wool of the woof within the threads of the warp; these are a broach, a reed, and an iron needle. The broach is made of a hard wood, seven or eight inches long, and two-thirds of an inch thick, ending in a point with a small handle. This serves as a shuttle; the silks, woollens, gold, or silver to be used in the work being wound on it. The reed or comb is also of wood, eight or nine inches long, and an inch thick on the back, thinning off to the extremity of the teeth, which are more or less apart, according to the greater or less degree of fineness of the intended work. Lastly, the needle is made in form of the common needle, only larger and longer. Its use is to press close the wool and silks when there is any line or colour that does not fit well.

All things being prepared for the work, and the workman ready to begin, he places himself on the wrong side of the piece, with his back towards the design; so that he works as it were blindfold, seeing nothing of what he does, and being obliged to quit his post and go to the other side of the loom whenever he would view and examine the piece, to correct it with his pressing-needle. To put silk, &c., in the warp, he first turns and looks at the design; then taking a broach full of the proper colour, he places it among the threads of the warp, which he brings across each other with his fingers, by means of the coats or threads fastened to the staff; this he repeats every time he has to change his colour. Having placed the silk or wool, he beats it with his reed or comb; and when he has thus wrought in several rows over each other, he passes round to see what effect they have, in order to reform the contours with his needle, if there be occasion. As the work advances, it is rolled upon the lower beam, and as much warp is unrolled from the upper beam as suffices. When the pieces are wide, several workmen may be employed at once.

The loom or frame on which the low warp is wrought, is much like that of the weavers. The principal parts are two strong pieces of wood forming the sides of the loom, and bearing a beam or roller at each end. They are sustained at bottom with other strong pieces of wood in the manner of trestles; and, to keep them the firmer, they are likewise fastened to the floor with a kind of buttresses, which prevent any shaking, though there are sometimes four or five workmen leaning on the fore-beam at once. The rollers have each their trunnions, by which they are sustained; they are turned by large iron pins three feet long. Along each beam runs a groove, in which is placed the weft, a piece of wood of about two inches diameter, and almost of the length of the roller; this piece fills the groove entirely, and is fastened from space to space by wooden pins. To the two wishes are fastened the two extremities of the warp, which is wound on the farther roller, and the work, as it advances, on the nearer. Across the two sides, almost in the middle of the loom, passes a wooden bar, which sustains small pieces of wood, not unlike the beam of a balance. To these pieces are fastened strings, which bear certain spring staves, with which the workman, by means of two treddles under the loom, on which he sets his feet, gives a motion to the coats, and makes the threads of the warp rise and fall alternately. Each loom has more or fewer of these spring-staves, and each staff more or fewer coats, as the tapestry consists of more or fewer threads.

The design or painting which the workman is to follow is placed underneath the warp, where it is sustained from space to space with strings, by means of which the design Taprobane is brought nearer the warp. The loom being mounted, there are two instruments used in working it, the reed and the flute. The flute does the office of the weaver's shuttle; it is made of a hard polished wood, three or four lines thick at the ends, and somewhat more in the middle, and three or four inches long. On it are wound the silks or other materials to be used as the woof of the tapestry. The comb or reed is of wood or ivory; it has usually teeth on both sides; it is about an inch thick in the middle, but diminishes each way to the extremity of the teeth; it serves to beat the threads of the woof close to each other, as fast as the workman has passed and placed them with his flute among the threads of the warp. The workman is seated on a bench before the loom, with his breast against the beam, only a cushion or pillow between them; and in this posture, separating with his fingers the threads of the warp, that he may see the design underneath, and taking a flute, mounted with a proper colour, he passes it among the threads, after having raised or lowered them, by means of the treddles moving the spring-staves and coats. Lastly, to press and close the threads of the silk or yarn, &c., thus placed, he strikes each course (i.e., what the flute leaves in its passing and coming back again) with the reed.

The usual widths of tapestry were formerly from two ells to three ells Paris measure; and it was the business of the rentreleurs, or fine-drawers, to unite the tapestry into one picture, without any appearance of seam. Of late years, however, the pieces are woven of such a width that joining is seldom required even for the largest pieces.