Behind the Warps

In 16th-century Europe, tapestries were the most important art form among elite patrons. Unlike panel paintings, sculpture, frescoes, or jewelry, tapestries had the unique capacity to combine narrative interest, visual impact, practical function, unsurpassed technique, precious materials, and portability. Tapestries wrapped stories around a space, insulated drafty castles, and boasted their owners’ status.

“They were the most expensive form of art that you could buy. Huge sets of tapestries cost more than castles. Emperors, like Charles V, were always moving from one castle to the other and moved with their tapestries. It was an easy way to display a huge richness and power when traveling,” says Pierre Maes, Director of De Wit Fine Tapestries, based in Mechelen, Belgium. Maes represents the fifth generation in the family business, which started as a tapestry manufacturer in 1889 and, for the last 135 years, has remained a leader in tapestry conservation.

The finest tapestries were woven in the Southern Netherlands, and, among the various workshops, the very best could be found in Brussels. The most powerful figures—kings, queens, popes, dukes, and princes—from all over Europe purchased their most beautiful series from Brussels, where tapestries were the city’s biggest export. Scholars estimate that, in this period, 25% of the population in Brussels was involved in tapestry production in some capacity. “It must have given the impression that, at the time, everybody was busy with tapestries, which is quite amazing,” shares Maes.

From beginning to end, the weaving process required extreme precision. The workshop would begin with a small design, called a petit patron, which would be enlarged to the full-scale cartoon, or carton. Even at this early stage, an understanding of the medium was essential. Maes explains, “The model has to be made into a cartoon. That means enlarging the model to the real size of the tapestry, sometimes to five meters high, ten meters long. For this, you have to hire an artist that understands tapestries. It requires a lot of skill and a lot of work, and so it’s also expensive.”

Because the cartoons were so demanding, they were reused—sometimes until they were falling apart. As the designs moved between workshops, it also created ambiguities around the origin points of ideas. “The concept of a unique piece of art is not something from that period. That’s very characteristic of tapestries,” says Maes. “You can see some motifs or groups of figures coming back in different tapestries.”

The movement of cartoons was also a way to circulate new ideas. Maes cites the cartoons ordered by Pope Leo X from Raphael, for 10 tapestries depicting the Acts of the Apostles. “When it was sent to Brussels, it was a visible shock for the artists because they were among the first elements of the Italian Renaissance that arrived in Brussels’s workshops. It was very different from the productions from that epoch, with no horizon, no depth, no perspective,” he explains. From that point on, “you begin to see tapestries with the mixture of the medieval elements and the new elements of the Italian Renaissance.”

Once the full-scale cartoon was scaled and colored, the weavers placed it behind the warps. The weavers worked from the back, peeking through the warps to check the design. The warp ran vertically in front of the weavers, which meant that when it was taken from the loom, it was turned 90 degrees, so the warp would run horizontally when hanging. For most tapestries, multiple weavers would work simultaneously, side by side. A good weaver could weave about the surface area of a hand in one workday. Maes stresses how working from the back, at an angle, further complicates an already difficult process. “At the end, when the tapestry is completely woven, they cut the warps and then they unroll it. And this is the first time they see the full composition on the front of the tapestry. So, if any fault was made during the weaving, it is there to stay because it’s almost impossible to correct.”

As for the actual conditions of the workshop, Maes suspects, based on his own experience working with conservators, that the weavers must have been almost silent. “You have one noise in the workshop, and it’s the noise of the wefts being beaten down onto the warp. So, it’s the sound of a comb hitting against wool, silk, and paper underneath.” The weavers would have been focused—and they stayed hydrated with beer. “We find in the archives that tapestry workshops were allowed to brew their own beer. This was a sign that they were important enough that they were allowed to do that. It was also a way to be economically more viable,” shares Maes.

But much as Maes knows about tapestry production, the textiles still, to a certain extent, remain a mystery: “The conclusion I always come to is when you really understand how weaving is done and how complex it is, you understand even less how it was possible to make them. We now have difficulty imagining how they were able to achieve that level of detail, all with one technique. Just weaving.”