Historical Development Of Tapestry

There has been a custom in the northwest region of China to hang carpets on walls since ancient times, some of which are used as tents to keep warm or decorate. The earliest physical tapestry in China is a fragment of a plain woven "human head portrait" carpet from the Western Han Dynasty unearthed from the Loulan ancient country site in Lop Nur, Xinjiang. At the beginning of the 20th century, Beijing and Tianjin also produced a small amount of tapestry with traditional Chinese painting art style. In the 1960s and 1970s, the production of wall carpets developed rapidly, and many places such as Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, and Inner Mongolia produced wall carpets with oil painting art styles. In 1974, a large Great Wall tapestry made in Tianjin, measuring 10 meters wide, 5 meters high, and weighing 280 kilograms, was a gift from the Chinese government to the United Nations and was displayed in the lounge of the United Nations Headquarters building.
The oldest surviving tapestry in Europe is the Bayeux tapestry made in 11th century France. It is a figure painting tapestry with a historical war theme, woven with plain wool and linen threads. Since the 20th century, modernist painters such as Picasso and Matisse have also been involved in the design of tapestry paintings. The traditional plain weave tapestry in Europe has gradually declined, replaced by various handmade weaving techniques and abstract art style fiber art tapestries.