Tapestry is neither real weaving nor true embroidery, but in a manner unites in its working those two processes into one. Though wrought in a loom and upon a warp stretched out along its frame, it has no woof thrown across those threads with a shuttle or any like appliance but its weft is done with many short threads, all variously coloured and put in by a needle. It is not embroidery, though so very like it, for tapestry is not worked upon what is really a web, having both warp and woof, but upon a series of closely set fine strings. From the way in which tapestry is spoken of in Holy Writ we may be sure that the art is very old; and if it did not take its first rise in Egypt, we are led by the same authority to conclude that it soon became successfully cultivated by the people of that land. The woman in the book of Proverbs says: “I have woven my bed with cords. I have covered it with painted tapestry, brought from Egypt.” We find, therefore, not only that it was employed as an article of household furniture among the Israelites, but that the Egyptians were the makers.
From Egypt through western Asia the art of tapestry-making found its way to Europe, and after many ages at last to England. Among the other manual labours followed in religious houses this handicraft was one; and monks became some of the best workmen. The altars and the walls of their churches were hung with tapestry. Matthew Paris tells us that among other ornaments96 which, in the reign of Henry the first, abbot Geoffrey had made for his church of St. Alban’s were three reredoses; the first a large one wrought with the finding of the body of St. Alban; the other two figured with the parables of the man who fell among thieves, and of the prodigal son. While in London in the year 1316 Simon abbot of Ramsey bought looms, staves, shuttles, and a slay: “pro weblomes emptis xxs. Et pro staves ad easdem vjd. Item pro iiij shittles pro eodem opere ijs vjd. Item in j. slay pro textoribus viijd.” Collier, in his history, quotes a letter from Giffard, one of the commissioners for the suppression of the smaller houses, written to Cromwell; in which he says, speaking of the monastery of Wolstrope in Lincolnshire: “Not one religious person there but that he can and doth use either imbrothering, writing books with very fair hand, making their own garments, carving, painting, or graving, etc.”
We may collect from Chaucer that working tapestry was not an uncommon trade; among his pilgrims he mentions in the prologue,
An haberdasher and a carpenter,
A webbe, a dyer, and a tapisser.
Pieces of English-made tapestry still remain. That fine though greatly damaged specimen at St. Mary’s hall, Coventry, representing the marriage of Henry the sixth, is one; a second is the curious reredos for an altar, belonging to the vintner’s company; this last is figured with St. Martin on horseback cutting his cloak in two that he might give one half to a poor man, and with St. Dunstan singing mass. A third piece, of large size and in good preservation, is in private possession, and hangs upon the wall in a house in Cornwall. It is one of four pieces, of which two have been lost, representing the marriage of Henry the seventh and Elizabeth of York; and was probably made about the year 1490.
The art of weaving tapestry was successfully followed in many parts of France and throughout ancient Flanders; where secular97 trade-guilds were formed for its especial manufacture in many of the towns. Several of these places won for themselves an especial fame; but so far, at last, did Arras outrun them all that arras-work came to be the common word, both here and on the continent, to mean all sorts of tapestry, whether wrought in England or abroad. Thus the fine hangings for the choir of Canterbury cathedral, now at Aix-en-Provence, though probably made at home by his own monks and given to that church by prior Goldston in 1595, are spoken of as arras-work: “de arysse subtiliter intextos.”
 
Banner of the tapestry workers of Lyons.
Arras is but one among other terms by which, during the middle ages, tapestry was called. Its earliest name was Saracenic work; “opus Saracenicum;” and, at first, tapestry was wrought as in the east, in a low or horizontal loom. The artisans of France and Flanders were the first to introduce the upright or vertical frame, afterwards known abroad as “de haute lisse,” in contradistinction to the low or horizontal frame called “de basse lisse.” Workmen who kept to the unimproved loom were known, in the trade, as Saracens, for retaining the method of their paynim teachers; and their work, Saracenic. In the year 1339 John de Croisettes, a Saracen-tapestry worker living at Arras, sells to the duke of98 Touraine a piece of gold Saracenic tapestry figured with the story of Charlemagne: “Jean de Croisettes, tapissier Sarrazinois demeurant à Arras, vend au duc de Touraine un tapis sarrazinois à or de l’histoire de Charlemaine.” The high frame, however, soon superseded the low one; and among the pieces of tapestry belonging to Philippe duke of Bourgogne and Brabant many are especially entered as of the high frame; one of which is thus described: “ung grant tapiz de haulte lice, sauz or, de l’istoire du duc Guillaume de Normandie comment il conquist Engleterre.” A very fine example is still to be seen in the collection at the Louvre, representing the history of St. Martin.
 
The legend of St. Martin.—From a piece of tapestry of the fourteenth century in the Louvre.
99 With the upright, as with the flat frame, the workman had to grope in the dark a great deal upon his path. In both, he was obliged to put in the threads on the back or wrong side of the piece, following his sketch as best he could behind the strings or warp. As the face was downward in the flat frame it was much less easy to observe and correct a fault. In the upright frame he might go in front, and with his own work in open view on one hand and the original design full before him on the other, he could mend as he went on, step by step, the smallest mistake, were it but a single thread. Put side by side, when finished, the pieces from the upright frame were in beauty and perfection far beyond those from the flat one. We can scarcely particularize the details in which that superiority consisted, for not one sing............