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[[strikethrough]] THE BOUCHER-HUET TAPESTRIES [[/strikethrough]]

Tapestry weaving, queen of all the crafts, reached its zenith with the products of the French looms in the eighteenth century. A glance at the exquisite textures of these panels, successful rivals of the paintings of the period, makes it hard to believe that tapestry weaving is the most primitive form of weaving. It is the outcome of the basket weaving of prehistoric man,- a simple crossing of threads, the warp which can be strung on a vertical or horizontal frame, and the weft which from earliest times seems to have consisted of colored thread, chiefly wool. Contrary to other types of hand weaving, where the shuttle is thrown across the whole width of the warp, the tapestry weaver brings his bobbin only as far as each color is required, and then turns it back. This mode of weaving often causes vertical slits where two colors meet; these slits are often treated as part of the pattern, but in western Europe from the Gothic period onward, they are so far as possible avoided by dovetailing, or hatching, or are sewn together from the back.

While it is possible to simply pass the bobbin across the warp by dividing the threads by hand, a simple improvement was introduced for separating the odd and even warp threads by means of sticks which pass across the warp (sheds, batôns de croisure), and are pulled alternatively by the weaver by way of strings (lizes or lisses). The weaver had thus only one hand free for throwing the bobbin (haute-lisse, high-warp, upright loom). The introduction of the horizontal loom (basse-lisse, low-warp) where the strings or leashes are fastened to two pedals which are worked with the right and left foot alternatively (tapisserie à pedales, à marches) was therefore an improvement. The weaver can work much faster because both hands are free, but an even greater skill is required. The high-warp weaver can walk around his loom and examine his work at any moment, but the low-warp weaver only sees it from the wrong side, a mass of tangled, floating threads and hanging bobbins. The finished products of both types of loom look alike; there are no distinguishing characteristics. The cartoon for low-warp must be designed inversely,

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---------- Reopened for Editing 2023-09-26 13:48:54