In 1824, workers at Gobelins Manufactory in Paris, the most prestigious tapestry makers in the world, were convinced that they were having the wool pulled over their eyes. The problem had to do with the colour of the threads they were using. The dyes they bought looked vibrant in sample books, but when woven together into tapestries the shades appeared muddy and dull.
This conundrum led Michel Eugène Chevreul, Gobelins’ director, to develop a new theory about colour – essentially that colours look different depending on the shades around them and that if you want them to look brighter, you need to pair them with their opposites on the colour wheel. This sounds obvious now, but was revolutionary then. His ideas influenced Paul Signac, Vincent van Gogh and Claude Monet among others, and changed the way artists thought about and used colour forever.
It might seem peculiar that we owe a cornerstone of modern art to tapestry, too often viewed as old-fashioned. Looked at another way, however, the relationship makes perfect sense. Tapestries are heavy textiles – originally handwoven but now also machine-made – traditionally used to cover furniture or whole walls. They served practical purposes by helping to exclude drafts and dampen echoes in chilly stone rooms, but were chiefly valued for their aesthetic – Gobelins Manufactory notably commissioned the most prestigious artists of the 17th and 18th centuries, including Charles Le Brun and François Boucher.
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Extremely expensive, they represented many hours of intricate and skilled labour at a time when dyes, thread and even the candles needed to sew by were costly.
Like many traditional crafts, tapestry has seen a resurgence over the past decade. In part, this is thanks to social media, which has helped textile artists create communities, spur each other on and generate new demand for an ancient and infinitely adaptable art form. But tapestry also brings texture and a sense of historic grounding to a room.
For those looking to incorporate tapestry seamlessly into their interiors, Pinton 1867 produces fabrics in a variety of styles including plains, contemporaries and classic ‘verdures’ available to buy by the metre. Purveyors of one-off pieces are myriad. Catarina Riccabona, for example, weaves graphic, often blocky wall hangings using refined palettes and subtle texture. The work of Jilly Edwards is bolder and looser – perhaps best described as abstract canvases using thread instead of paint. The medium is also a tool for London-based artist Dalia James, who creates large hangings using silk and bamboo threads she dip dyes by hand. All three are skilled colourists, carrying on the work of Chevreul in the most authentic medium possible.
