Contemporary Tapestry Weaving

Every building, whether large or small, has inherited problems for the tapestry artist.

These may be poor or restricting lighting, or wall color that is not sympathetic to a tapestry hung against it, but which the client is reluctant to change. It may be difficult to see a tapestry clearly because the view is impeded by columns or some other architectural feature. Sometimes it can be difficult to make even a very large tapestry to stand out and “read” well on an enormous wall area.

It is one of the tapestry-artist’s responsibilities to take into account these factors and produce a tapestry that will enhance the space for which it is designed and not be diminished by the shortcomings of a setting.

Independent weavers have the freedom to work at any size. Many of them like small works because they are relatively quick and easy to weave, and less expensive than larger pieces. Small tapestries are also simple to incorporate into modern domestic interiors, where they can be fixed as small hangings and hung as pictures.

Independent artist-weavers working on very large scale tapestries, usually for corporate clients or public bodies, may call on established workshops to do the final weaving. This sometimes used to pose a problem for designers. For example, during the 1960s and 1970s, most very large tapestries designed in the USA were sent to Europe to be woven

by expert weavers as at that time there were no weavers of top quality in the USA. Now, however, there are weavers with the skills to reproduce designs as originally intended in most countries that design tapestries.

During the 1970s and 1980s weavers in Japan and other Far-Eastern countries introduced revolutionary changes, using paper and other fibers to construct flat and three-dimensional objects in what is now called “Fiber art”.

These were exhibited in Lausanne, where they inspired other weavers. In the USA in particular, weavers experimented with unorthodox fibers and techniques with great vigour and enthusiasm during this period. Sometimes they used these new methods in conjunction with the traditional tapestry technique, at other times they worked completely independently of anything that had gone before.

Many artist-weavers have remained true to the real tapestry technique, working with meticulous care and painstaking patience; others have returned to it, refreshed after using other methods.

Whatever the approach, the great merit of the artist-weavers is their ability to be both designers and producers of the cloth, creating a satisfying image from designs prepared for use with textured materials.

Machine-made copies of traditional tapestries woven on Jacquard looms are different from true tapestry in that the weft runs from selvedge to selvedge and the pattern is not reversible.

To be compatible with the Jacquard mechanism, the yarns are finer than those used by hand for tapestry weaving. The pattern is set up in advance using a system of perforated cards so there is no opportunity for the weaver to introduce individual subtleties to the work such as changes of expression in a face and so on.

These copies of traditional tapestries are cheaper than hand-woven pieces but, from a distance, can look very much like the real thing. They have the advantage, for the modern small home, of being produced to a reduced scale compare with the historical tapestries.