Tapestry weaving is an art that requires greater care and skill on the part of the workman than any other branch of textile manufacture, especially in that kind known as "storied tapestry," in which is woven a design or picture copied from a previously executed cartoon.

Tapestry is woven in the "high warp" [haute-lisse) or in the "low warp" loom: in the former case the loom is vertical, and in the latter horizontal. The largest sized and the more important kinds of tapestry, such as the "Gobelins," are made in the high warp looms.

On account of the skill required, the accuracy and difficulty connected with the weaving of storied tapestry, it takes a long time to educate and perfect the training of a tapestry weaver - who must be an artist himself, so much being left to him in the selection, harmonizing, and shading of the different colours, even after the design is made that he is required to copy.

In tapestry weaving the warp is covered by the woof on both its sides.. The warp is divided into two leaves or parts by a thread, and by a glass rod or tube called the baton de croisure.

"To form the web, the workman takes a shuttle mounted with wool or silk, the end of which he fastens to the warp to the left of the space to be covered by the colour in his shuttle; then passing his left hand between the two leaves, separated by the baton de croisure, he draws towards him the thread which this shade is to cover; his right hand, passing between the threads, lays hold of the shuttle, which he brings to the right, and his left hand taking hold of the coats brings forward the back thread of the warp, while the right hand returns the shuttle to the place from which it was first moved. This passing and returning of the shuttle forms what is called two shoots or a course." (De Champeaux).

One of the great difficulties of the weaver is the shading off or gradation of the colours, which is rendered more difficult by the design being reproduced on the wrong side from the position of the weaver. Hatching and stippling are resorted to in order to prevent a harsh or mosaic-like appearance, and it is here that the great skill and artistic knowledge of the weaver are most required. An extraordinary number of tones and shades are used in an important piece of work, all of which require to be fast dyed in colour in order to secure durability of tone in the fabric. It is said that M. Chevreul, the late famous French chemist and director of the dyeing department of the Gobelins, had composed a chromatic prism of 14,420 different tones.

The best wool used in principal tapestry works on the Continent has always been imported from Kent in England.

The art of tapestry weaving was originally acquired from the East, where carpets of a floral and ornamental design were woven in the imitation of the old hand-made embroideries. In Europe the names of Sarazins or Sara-zinois tapestry were given to these products from the fact that they were made and exported by the Saraqens. Perhaps the earliest woven tapestries of Europe were the Flemish, which were first made towards the end of the twelfth century. The towns of Arras, Oudenarde, Lille, Brussels, Valenciennes, Tournay, and Bruges were celebrated for the manufacture of tapestry, of which the town of Arras was the most important, hence the old name of "Arras" used in England for all kinds of storied tapestry.

Flanders

Flanders was a rich and powerful country during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and at that time the ports of Bruges and Antwerp were the greatest in the world. The various trades were protected by the great corporations or guilds against the encroachments of the nobles on their rights, and the most sturdy and turbulent of all the guilds was that of the Flemish weavers, by reason of their numbers and general prosperity of their trade. The product of the Flemish looms found its way to all parts of Europe and particularly to England, and as far as design and workmanship were concerned, and in the flat treatment of the former to the material, these old Flemish tapestries have never been excelled. The flat decorative treatment in the figure subjects of the earlier work, consisting of allegorical designs and romances by such artists as Roger van der Weyden, Stuerbout, Hugo van der Goes, and other artists of the Van Eyck school, were singularly appropriate to the material, and immensely superior to the more gorgeous effects of colour and misapplied shading of the later French tapestries. Examples of this earlier work are still in existence in the museums and palaces of Europe.

Louis XI., King of France, took the town of Arras in 1477, and this was practically the death blow to the manufacture of tapestry at that place, but immediately after this event Brussels under the Burgundian rule rose to great prosperity. Artists and tapestry weavers flocked to Brussels, which soon became a great centre of this industry. Designs were sent from Italy by the Popes and other princes to be woven in tapestry, and many of the best Italian and Flemish painters made designs for the Brussels ateliers. Pope Leo X. had the tapestries - now in the Vatican - from the celebrated cartoons by Raphael, made in Brussels. These cartoons are now in the Kensington Museum. They were bought by Charles I. from a tapestry manufactory of Brussels by the advice of Rubens.

Giulio Romano, the Italian painter, Lucas van Leyden, Bernard van Orley, Jean Mabuse, and other artists of th*š Renaissance period, furnished designs for Brussels tapestry.