Tapestry. Tapestry is a form of textile art, traditionally woven by hand on a loom. Normally it is used to create images rather than patterns. Tapestry is relatively fragile, and difficult to make, so most historical pieces are intended to hang vertically on a wall, or sometimes horizontally over a piece of furniture such as a table or bed. Some periods made smaller pieces, often long and narrow and used as borders for other textiles. Most weavers use a natural warp thread, such as wool, linen, or cotton. The weft threads are usually wool or cotton but may include silk, gold, silver, or other alternatives. Tapestry Room from Croome Court, moved to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, hung with made to measure 18th-century Gobelins tapestries, also covering the chairs. 1763-71 In late medieval Europe tapestry was the grandest and most expensive medium for figurative images in two dimensions, and despite the rapid rise in importance of painting it retained this position in the eyes of many Renaissance patrons until at least the end of the 16th century, if not beyond. The European tradition continued to develop and reflect wider changes in artistic styles until the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars, before being revived on a smaller scale in the 19th century. Technically, tapestry is weft-faced weaving, in which all the warp threads are hidden in the completed work, unlike most woven textiles, where both the warp and the weft threads may be visible. In tapestry weaving, weft yarns are typically discontinuous; the artisan interlaces each coloured weft back and forth in its own small pattern area. It is a plain weft-faced weave having weft threads of different colours worked over portions of the warp to form the design. European tapestries are normally made to be seen only from one side, and often have a plain lining added on the back. However, other traditions, such as Chinese kesi and that of pre-Columbian Peru, make tapestry to be seen from both sides. Tapestry should be distinguished from the different technique of embroidery, although large pieces of embroidery with images are sometimes loosely called tapestry, as with the famous Bayeux Tapestry, which is in fact embroidered. From the Middle Ages on European tapestries could be very large, with images containing dozens of figures. They were often made in sets, so that a whole room could be hung with them. The Triumph of Fame, probably Brussels, 1500s High-warp loom at the Gobelins factory with mirrors, so the weaver behind the web can follow his work. In English, tapestry has two senses, both of which apply to most of the works discussed here. Firstly it means work using the tapestry weaving technique described above and below, and secondly it means a rather large textile wall hanging with a figurative design. Some embroidered works, like the Bayeux Tapestry, meet the second definition but not the first. The situation is complicated by the French equivalent tapisserie also covering needlepoint work, which can lead to confusion, especially with pieces such as furniture covers, where both techniques are used. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the earliest use in English was in a will of 1434, mentioning a Lectum meum de tapstriwerke cum leonibus cum pelicano. They give a wide definition, covering: A textile fabric decorated with designs of ornament or pictorial subjects, painted, embroidered, or woven in colours, used for wall hangings, curtains, covers for seats. before mentioning especially those woven in a tapestry weave. The word tapestry derives from Old French, from, meaning to cover with heavy fabric, to carpet, in turn from, heavy fabric, via Latin, which is the Latinisation of the Greek, carpet, rug. The earliest attested form of the word is the Mycenaean Greek, written in the Linear B syllabary. Tapestry was not the common English term until near the end of the classic period for them. If not just called hangings or cloths, they were known as arras, from the period when Arras was the leading production centre. Arazzo is still the term for tapestry in Italian, while a number of European languages use variants based on Gobelins, after the French factory; for example both Danish and Hungarian use gobelin. Thomas Campbell argues that in documents relating to the Tudor royal collection from 1510 onwards arras specifically meant tapestries using gold thread. Tapestry is a type of weaving. Various designs of looms can be used, including upright or high-warp looms, where the tapestry is stretched vertically in front of the weaver, or horizontal low-warp looms, which were usual in large medieval and Renaissance workshops, but later mostly used for smaller pieces.