Discovering Tapestries

Having antique tapestries and tapestry in your collection of art can also be a good investment as well as a good way to preserve this wonderful craft. Tapestries can be among the most beautiful objects in a wide selection of art collection. Not only do they add variety to an interesting art collection, they also can be good enough to care and preserve for posterity. But just like any other piece of art, tapestries also need to be taken cared of. Tapestries can easily be subjected to the most abuse as well as being threatened by the harsh elements. That is why caring for antique tapestries can be a time consuming job and may take a bit of expertise.

The term tapestry was originally used to describe those ancient coverings for furniture, tapestries has generally been divided between two areas of notable origin, the Asian as well as the Western types of tapestries. Asian tapestries are known to be older and more opulent with the long tradition of the craft started from early makers located in central Asia, the Middle East, India, and China.

The Western tradition of creating tapestries was said to have originated also from the Asian traditional craft. The Asian tradition of building artful tapestries was established much earlier than the Western version. It is said that the earliest European tapestries were produced sometime in the 12th and 13th century Spain, which had developed the craft with the help of their Islamic ties.

Next to Spain, France became the most important centre of tapestry manufacture during the 17th and 18th centuries. There were tapestry manufacturers established in France that was based on the traditional eastern techniques. Next in line came the production of tapestries in 16th century and the early part of the 17th century in England. Since then, the production of the tapestries has become a popular craft that has spread all over the world from then on.


Today, commercial tapestry weaving makes use of traditional motifs, but there are also modern tapestries that make use of a little bit more modern approach to designs. In many good tapestries today, there are no fixed patterns, only patterns created by the mind. Antique tapestries were totally handmade and have a greater level of artistry injected upon them.

Most of the tapestries today now employ the use of various machines to create exquisite as well as sophisticated designs on tapestries to make them even more beautiful. But it is still the ancient tapestries of the past that many collectors try to find and add into the collection. The reason mainly is that it is the past tapestries that showed more the artistry of the makers.

A tapestry seems to have something unique and enticing, especially when someone produces it beautifully with their own hands.