PRINCIPLES OF DESIGN AND APPLICATION

Lesson 9: Effects of Yarn, Weave, Colour and Finishes on Textiles

Tapestry designs

Tapestry was known as ‘mirror of civilization’, because many tapestries represented scenario of every day life. The design often depicted great historical incidents. Tapestry designs are the elaborate large patterns produced on hand loom. Tapestry is much different from jacquard, where jacquard though repeats on large number of ends and picks but utilizes repeated patterns of finite size, where the former (tapestry) may be like painting with yarn, depicting an endless picture.

The finest articles are seen in Peru, in Coptic Egypt around fifth and sixth centuries A.D., and in Northern Europe during fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries. Tapestry articles were made on a simple handloom most commonly, vertical loom shown in Fig.10.29.