Tapestry Studies

The Ormesby Psalter is perhaps the most magnificent yet enigmatic of the great Gothic psalters produced in East Anglia in the first half of the fourteenth century. Its pages boast a wealth of decoration picked out in rich colours and burnished gold, and its margins are inhabited by a vibrant and outlandish crew of monsters and men, beasts, birds and insects, in every probable and improbable combination. Fantastic imagery proliferates, with cripples and musicians, mermaids and centaurs, lovers and warriors juxtaposed with scenes from everyday life, from courtly myth and chivalric legend, from folk-tales, fables and riddles.

The psalter takes its name from Robert of Ormesby, subprior at Norwich Cathedral Priory in the 1330s, who donated the manuscript to his alma mater. He was not the first owner, however, and it has long been acknowledged that the writing, decoration and binding of the book took place a series of distinct campaigns from the late thirteenth to the mid- fourteenth century. The final result was the work of four or
five scribes and up to seven illuminators and its pages show a panorama of stylistic development over the period. Because of the intermittent nature of its production, unravelling its complexities has sometimes been thought to hold the key to understanding the ‘East Anglian School’, a group of large, luxury manuscripts connected with Norwich Cathedral and Norfolk churches and patrons.

It is not however an easy key to use, and many aspects of the
Psalter's production remain opaque. This book casts an
entirely new light on its history, not only clarifying and dating the successive phases of production, but associating the main campaign with the patronage of John de Warenne, Earl of Surrey, one of the greatest magnates of the time.

Extensively illustrated with full page colour reproductions
of the manuscript’s main decorated pages, as well as many of smaller initials and numerous comparative illustrations.

El conjunto de gobelinos confeccionado por el TNT (1973-1995) es considerado casi excepcional en el mundo, en la medida que emanaron de un proyecto constante de colaboración entre alumnos y artistas y por el hecho privilegiado de mantenerse su colección completa. Se trata de obras maestras del tapiz artístico contemporáneo, incluidas por firmas trascendentes del arte mexicano. A su vez, dan cuenta del esplendor que en los años 70 y principios de los 80 tuvieron los lenguajes informales en nuestro país, desde la abstracción semi-figurativa hasta la lírica radical, y de las influencias de la estética del cinetismo y la psicodelia.
La producción del TNT fue simultánea a la de otros talleres comerciales, como el iniciado por Fritz Riedl en Guadalajara o el efímero proyecto estatal en Xonacatlán. Si bien la calidad fue igualada entre proyectos homólogos, sólo el TNT se propuso la docencia de la disciplina, impartiendo las licenciaturas en tapiz y diseño textil, al mismo tiempo que se producían diseños de artistas en ediciones de hasta seis copias, de las que el taller conservaba al menos la primera.
Se debe al artista Pedro Preux (1932, París – 2011, Ciudad de México) la creación del TNT, que él mismo dirigiría hasta mediados de los años 1980, tiempo durante el que funcionaría en el Excovento de La Merced como dependencia directa del Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes. Vendría luego un periodo de incertidumbre y nomadismo, quedando el taller adscrito a la Escuela Nacional de Pintura, Escultura y Grabado “La Esmeralda” a partir de 1989, aunque cerraría sus puertas a raíz de mudarse esta última al Centro Nacional de las Artes en 1994.  La colección está conformada por 26 diseños de 21 artistas y 15 bocetos; salvo dos casos anteriores, todos los tapices fueron tejidos entre 1974 y 1990.
Esta exposición pretende dar cuenta de la magnificencia que puede alcanzar la tapicería -a no confundir con otras manifestaciones del amplio campo del arte textil- brindándonos la ocasión para revalorar su potencial vigencia. Entre las posibilidades del tapiz artístico está la de proveer al Estado de decoración artística de calidad, contemporánea a la vez que enraizada en la tradición artesanal. Finalmente, compartir la sorpresa por el redescubrimiento de tan esplendida colección, sin parangón en ningún otro acervo público de nuestro país, obliga a repensar las dinámicas de sobrevivencia y resguardo del patrimonio nacional.
Iñaki Herranz, curador [TEXTO DE SALA, 2014]
Investigación, curaduría y textos: Iñaki Herranz
Iniciativa de rescate de la colección del TNT: Luis Gómez, Iñaki Herranz & Carla Rippey.

Table of contents of the catalogue accompanying the exhibition "Raffael – Macht der Bilder. Die Tapisserien und ihre Wirkung" (June 6 – August 30 2020) in the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden.


Starting in 1515, Raphael created ten large-format cartoons commissioned by Pope Leo X, after which tapestries were woven for the Sistine Chapel. They show scenes from the lives of the two apostles Peter and Paul. Raphael's cartoons were used as models for other series–for reweavings–in the 17th century at the English tapestry manufactory in Mortlake. Also in Mortlake, the six tapestries of the Dresden set were woven; they later came into the possession of Augustus the Strong and thus to the Collection of the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden.
The exhibition catalogue  traces the genesis of Raphael's designs, devotes itself in detail to the Dresden series, and addresses the outstanding influence of the tapestries on subsequent artists up to the 19th century.

DIALOG Warsaw 2015 This pubHcation has been co-financed by the Rector of the University of Warsaw and the Faculty of Oriental Studies, University of Warsaw. Editorial review: Prof dr hab. Marek M. Dziekan DTP: "Radon" Radoslaw Kierelowicz vel Kierylowicz Cover design: Zofia Lasocka

This book makes a careful examination of occult mysteries hidden in plain sight on the Bayeux Tapestry. The Bayeux Tapestry is an embroidered cloth made in the 1070s. It is nearly 70 metres (230 ft) long and 50 centimetres (20 in) tall with embroidered captions describing events leading up to the Norman conquest of England concerning William, Duke of Normandy (a.k.a William the Conqueror), and Harold, Earl of Wessex, later King of England, and culminating in the Battle of Hastings.
William the Conqueror of whom much of the Bayeux Tapestry concerns, is related to King John Lackland of England (a.k.a John Plantagenet) from whom all 44 American presidents bar one (Martin Van Buren, the eighth president) are credited as direct descendants.

Marie Cuttoli is the thread that runs throughout this thesis. She was an ensemblier; she commissioned works to complete entire rooms. This holistic approach towards room design, one that emphasized balance between traditional and mechanized forms, was not particularly innovative for its time. And yet, it appealed to the American consumer. Although I concentrate on the interior as it was implemented in Western Europe, America came to embrace the tapestry productions of Cuttoli’s salon, Maison Myrbor. Touring exhibitions during the interwar period introduced audiences in Europe and the United States alike to Cuttoli’s products. In Cuttoli’s own era, the tapestries were shown no less than three times at the Arts Club of Chicago (in 1936, 1941, and 1953), at the San Francisco 1939 Golden Gate International Exposition, and at Lord & Taylor exposition of French Decorative Art in New York City in 1928.* Indeed, the productions of Maison Myrbor were seemingly so well-known during the interwar period, in an article from 1929, Vogue assumed their readers were already quite familiar with these items. Journalist Edith Morgan wrote, “…Madame Cuttoli’s ‘Myrbor’ rugs, designed by Jean Lurçat and Fernand Léger. These fascinating rugs, executed in the most brilliant colours, were shown last winter at Lord and Taylor’s exhibition, and need not be described in detail here.” Cuttoli’s tapestries had been so widely exhibited at this point that they needed no introduction. Today, many of the Maison Myrbor products reside in museum collections such as that of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, and at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. Still others can be found in corporate collections, such as that of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey,32 and the First National Bank of Chicago (today known as Chase). Additionally, other international European shows featuring the Atelier Cuttoli productions occurred during the in Brussels, London, and Stockholm during this time. Cuttoli’s prominence in international collections makes her relative erasure from modern art all the more conspicuous. An ebb and flow of public consciousness regarding certain artworks and movements overtime can only be expected. But the sheer output of Maison Myrbor and quality of the artists involved in this textile endeavor underscores the need for a reexamination of the atelier’s products. By virtue of the tapestries, carpets, and garments that came out of Cuttoli’s salon, we are compelled to make a case for this modern art patron and her tapestries to once again enter the mainstream art historical consciousness as an integral part of modernity.

An in-depth exploration of the tapestry collection of the Countess of Shrewsbury ('Bess of Hardwick'), as recorded in the 1601 inventory of Hardwik Hall. While many of the tapestries were middling-quality works bought 'off the peg' from merchants, the choice of subjects, and their deployment in the house, form a coherent scheme which can be read as an articulation of the Protestant values of their owner. A set of painted canvas hangings of the Story of Saint Paul, commissioned for the chapel at Hardwick, can be understood as part of this scheme. The possibility that some of the older tapestries in the 1601 inventory, including the famous 'Devonshire Hunting Tapestries' now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, may have belonged to Mary, Queen of Scots, is also explored.

In this chapter, I focus on Le Corbusier, an artist with whom Marie Cuttoli worked, and one who is most pertinent to our examination of the tapestry and its role in architecture. I begin with the crucial question of why Le Corbusier concerned himself with tapestry. An immensely productive artist, Le Corbusier worked with a variety of media in his lifetime but is perhaps best known for his contributions to city planning and architecture. Le Corbusier’s name is synonymous with the interwar movement in western architecture known as International Style, primarily due to his book on the subject, entitled Toward a New Architecture (1923). However, Le Corbusier’s name also evokes a time in which the role of the architect expanded into a figure whose consultation was needed in every aesthetic decision. In the interwar period, the architect took on a variety of activities and interests—interests which included the potential of the tapestry.

The Myrbor tapestries are fraught with problems due to their colonialist narrative, which leads to trouble when artistic institutions attempt to display them. We know little to nothing of the workers who produced these tapestries. The question of whether these objects belong in a textiles department or in a department of modern art is a difficult one for many curators. Additionally, modern tapestries raise complicated questions regarding their authorship, as they often have a separate artist, commissioner, manufacturer, and owner. Furthermore, with Marie Cuttoli insisting that the tapestries produced through Maison Myrbor be manufactured in editions of five, the value of these weavings as original works of art was negatively impacted. Still, we must ask: if the museum’s duty is to share the objects in its collection, are these reasons enough to warrant the sequestering of these modern tapestries? And, as for the issues they encounter, we must ask how will the museum determine who the real maker of these modern tapestries is—is it the textile house or the artist themselves? If the textile house and the artist are from different cultures, where is the object truly from? On what rationale are these decisions based?

New documentation recording the purchase of a set of Scenes from Country Life after Jacob Jordaens, for a banquet held for Charles I and Henrietta Maria; details of the political motivation behind the commission of Mortlake tapestries by Christian Bruce for her London house, which was a focus for pro-Stuart plotting during the interregnum; and tapestries of the History of the Sabines which relate to newly-discovered painted silk hangings made by Claude Bosquet for Louis XIV.

El 7 de marzo de 1594 Felipe II otorgó testamento. Aunque aún viviría cuatro años más, quería dejar organizada su sucesión que no se preveía fácil, pues su heredero aún no contaba dieciséis años. Preocupado porque sus dominios no se mer-maran, incluyó una cláusula que vinculaba todos los territorios a la Corona: …ordeno y mando que mi heredero y herederos que por tiempo fueren miren mucho por la conse-ruación del patrimonio real de todos los reynos señoríos y estados que yo al presente posseo y al tiempo de mi muerte dexare y que no vendan ni enagenen ni empeñen cosa alguna de las ciudades villas y lugares, vassallos y jurisdictiones, rentas, pechos y derechos ni otra cosa alguna perte-nesçientes a la corona real…

Ultimato entro il 1767 il ciclo di Pirro, destinato alla Camera di Parata della defunta regina Elisabetta di Lorena, ed avanzata la serie di Annibale concepita per l'Anticamera dei Paggi di Carlo Emanuele III, le forze gravitanti attorno alla Regia Manifattura di Arazzi furono impiegate per proseguire il rivestimento delle anticamere del primo piano in direzione della Sala degli Staffieri della regina in facciata. La prosecuzione del progetto allestitivo non corrispose ad una continuità stilistica con i quattro cicli già posti in essere, essendo stati esclusi dalla fase della realizzazione dei bozzetti gli interpreti dell'opera del defunto Claudio Francesco Beaumont (m. 1766), gli allievi della sua scuola quali G. Domenico Molinari, erede delle committenze lasciate inevase alla morte del maestro, in favore del napoletano Francesco De Mura. L'assegnazione al pittore, che intratteneva già dal 1738 contatti con la corte torinese, 2 rispose evidentemente alla soddisfazione del gusto della futura regina Maria Antonia Fernanda, per la cui Camera da Letto al secondo piano della reggia torinese l'artista aveva spedito nel 1750 i sovrapporta Azioni eroiche di donne illustri, corrispondenti alle Storie di Alessandro Magno figuranti nella vicina Camera d'Udienza dello sposo Vittorio Amedeo, unici corpi estranei appositamente previsti per un cantiere dominato dal contesto artistico locale, nonché ad un allineamento agli aggiornamenti della reggia napoletana. Il rinnovo dell'appartamento nuziale del diciassettenne re partenopeo Ferdinando IV, nipote della principessa consorte sabauda, già in via di completamento all'inizio del 1766, vide attivo De Mura 1 Per i prodromi: o. Graffione, Il cantere degli arazzi di Claudio Francesco Beaumont. Nuove indagini, in G. DarDanello, Di modello, di intaglio e di cesello. Scultori e incisori da Ladatte ai Collino, Torino 2012. Per un approfondimento si rimanda inoltre a: A. telluCCini, L'Arazzeria torinese, in «Dedalo. Rassegna d'Arte», VII (1926), p. 101-131; 167-185; M. viale ferrero, Arazzi e tappeti antichi, Torino 1952, pp. 105 -111; M. viale ferrero, Arazzi, in Mostra del Barocco Piemontese, Catalogo della mostra a cura di v. viale, Torino 1963, vol. II, pp. 1-6; v. natale, scheda in Bâtire une ville au siècle des lumières, Catalogo della mostra a cura dell'Archivio di Stato di Torino,

The contribution of this thesis to the existing field of tiraz textile studies is that it
has tried to overcome the existing rift between historians and textile specialists,
in approaching the subject in a more unified way, which takes into account the
interrelationship between production, administration and use. Historians have
traditionally worked on the textile industry and administration from the point of
view of Arabic literary sources, while textile specialists focused on the material
evidence of fabrics and their manufacture.

Rather than relying on one collection, as most previous authors have done,
samples from all the major museum collections are examined here and have
been arranged in a database of 1823 items, which made it possible to analyse
the properties of textiles taxonomically. By using taxonomic analysis both
material and historical information could be combined and emerging trends
tested against the historical evidence of literary sources. A major discovery here
has been how the textile evidence reflects administrative changes in control of
the textile industry and the wider administrative relationship between Egypt and
Iraq under the Abbasids.

While there is agreement by both textile specialists and historians that tiraz
textiles were produced for court consumption, neither considered the question
why tiraz textiles were used in burials, from which most surviving tiraz textiles
have in fact been recovered archaeologically. This thesis approaches this
subject by considering both material and literary evidence and suggests that
tiraz textiles were regarded as a source of blessing for the deceased because of
their caliphal association recorded in their inscriptions.

The making of the identity of new emerging powers in the Mediterranean between the 11th and 13th centuries is a fascinating topic. In this context, it is especially relevant the public display of Hercules in a series of artworks in cities related to the journey of the Greek hero to Hesperia. These depictions encompass many aspects -sacred and profane- of his medieval legend: Hercules as a model of strength for the Christian ruler, Hercules the mythical founder of cities, and Hercules the wandering hero. An accurate analysis of each case will allow us to evaluate the importance of Hercules in building an identity for the rising powers in the Mediterranean and, ultimately, the usefulness of these myths in helping them invent a new past.

Eleven from the fifteen large tapestries of the Life of Christ, now in StJohn's co-cathedral in Valletta, Malta, are inspired by paintings and tapestries designed by Rubens. The  series has been woven by Judocus de Vos in Brussels between 1699 and 1700

Lata pi?cdziesi^te ubieglego wieku w Polsce nie sprzyjaly rozwojowi badan nad mecenatem artystycznym magnaterii w czasach saskich i w dobie Oswiecenia. Marksistowska historiografia postrzegala wiek XVIII jako okres intelektualnego i politycznego upadku spoleczenstwa szlacheckiego, zdemoralizowanego przez "z}ot^ wolnosc", korupcj? urz?dnikow, "sobiepanstwo", zanik patriotycznych idealow, brak mysli ekonomicznej i aspiracji kulturalnych'. Ten wypaczony, stroimiczy obraz zacz^to korygowac dopiero w latach siedem-dziesi^tych. Przy utrwalanej przez programy szkolne negatywnej ocenie postawy polskiej arystokracji -sprzedajnej, b^^dz biemej, wr?cz nietaktem bylo podj?cie studiow nad strukturami manufaktur i dorobkiem artystycznym wypracowanym w dobrach RadziwiHow, kolekcjonerstwem Mniszchow, przedsi?wzi?ciami budowlanymi Branickich. Dodatkowym argumentem na rzecz eliminowania lub ograniczania takiej problematyki byla utrata Kresow Wschodnich Rzeczypospolitej, terenu, gdzie w przewazaj^cej wi?kszosci narodzily si? najwazniejsze mecenasowskie przedsi?wzi?cia XVIII wieku. Pojedyncze prace z tej dziedziny, stanowi^ce naturalne przedtuzenie takich syntez, jak monografie krolewskich mecenatow Jana III i Stanislawa Augusta Poniatowskiego piora Tadeusza Mankowskiego -mozna policzyc na palcach-.

Almost all the sets by Van Orley that have been subjected
to meticulous analysis date from after 1715. This means that
the work that is most familiar is essentially that of the ageing
Van Orley. This article aims to complement this picture by investigating
Van Orley’s activities as a cartoon painter between
1698 and 1706. This new focus has been made possible by the
discovery of a file containing mémoires and other documents
in a lawsuit that the artist brought in 1706 against the Brussels
tapestry producer Judocus de Vos (1661–1734) for payments that
were in arrears. This source allows us not only to attribute certain
tapestries and sets to Jan van Orley and Augustin Coppens,
and to date them, but also to give a more precise account of
the entrepreneurial strategy pursued by De Vos around 1700.
Finally, it demonstrates the remarkable complexities involved
in the scholarly quest for a single recognisable stylistic signature
in tapestries, not only because cartoons were often retouched
by different artists, but also because sets of cartoons by different
artists were often combined.

Art historian Joseph Mascheck writes, “at best, the ornamental arts themselves magnify qualities already present in material life and work.” The term “ornamental” has long been used to denote, and to denigrate, a particular type of art. It is often applied to art which is associated with early humanity’s creative efforts, art that is emphatically not related to the grand tradition of oil painting in Europe. One such medium which fits into this uneasy categorization of the ornamental is tapestry. A tapestry is a woven picture, formed by the very material which both supports and constructs the image. This peculiar medium can, therefore, only further magnify its own qualities. There is nothing more in the medium for the viewer to consider; it is not two separate forms of matter in dialogue, such as the relationship of paint to canvas, but one single form of matter which amplifies itself. It might be called the ultimate self-referential art form. When we look at “crafts” such as weaving, an intrinsic relationship is molded between material and support. The ability for a medium such as wool to magnify “qualities already present” in itself is far greater than that of a painting, which, conversely, can rest on various types of supports. To re-purpose Marshall McLuhan’s famous “the medium is the message,” in the case of the tapestry, the medium/matter of wool is the support. It is the ground. It is also the message, when employed in a pictorial sense. The tapestry, through its creation and its final product, embodies this phrase.