Tapestries were among the most prestigious of art forms, created for the mightiest in the land and valued for centuries. Despite its illustrious history, tapestry weaving is actually a simple technique that requires little equipment or expenditure, and can be done anywhere. Written by a prominent tapestry weaver, this lavishly illustrated book gently leads you through the whole process with detailed diagrams and exciting work by contemporary weavers. It will be useful to the absolute beginner, but experienced weavers will also find new ideas and techniques to tempt and inspire them. The book includes a step-by-step guide to setting up a small frame loom and starting to weave; basic and more advanced techniques, and how to create shapes and textures; advice on taking your work into the third dimension, whether bas relief or fully sculptural; information on the qualities of different materials and how they can be used to create the effects you want; and design ideas for tapestry and how to follow supplied designs. This will be an essential source book for experienced and novice weavers, and is beautifully illustrated with 190 colour illustrations and diagrams.

Jean Pierre Larochette is a renowned top-level artist, making this opportunity to learn from him a treasure for all levels of weavers.

A colorful guided tour from an expert, enabling weavers, textile lovers, and art lovers to notice and appreciate what tapestries can do and how they do it. This guide from expert tapestry weaver and historian Sidore gives how-to strategies enabling weavers and nonweavers to notice and appreciate the meaning of these artworks. You'll discover much to enjoy in photos of more than 300 tapestries from the 12th to the 21st centuries. Sidore enables you to think about the weavings in ways you have never before considered as she groups pieces that talk with each other--and that also converse with the viewer. Enjoy learning basic elements of weaving to help you become increasingly sophisticated in understanding what you're seeing. Then, learn six ways in which tapestries can call attention to themselves as cloth. This eye-opening guide to seeing explains the great range of materials and visual themes, the use of trompe l'oeil, the importance of the direction in which the weaver weaves, and more. After this learning experience, you'll bring smarter eyes to your museum wandering, deeper enjoyment to your collection and purchases, and surprising new skills and creativity to your weaving of fibers . . . and of life.

Projects: Sun sampler -- Peruvian birds -- Cat and fishes -- Simple landscape -- Cover design -- Tulip -- The parrot gets the last word -- Little owl -- Sleeping dog -- Sleeping cat -- Bird.

Spanning the backs of choir stalls above the heads of the canons and their officials, large-scale tapestries of saints' lives functioned as both architectural elements and pictorial narratives in the late Middle Ages. In an extensively illustrated book that features sixteen color plates, Laura Weigert examines the role of these tapestries in ritual performances. She situates individual tapestries within their architectural and ceremonial settings, arguing that the tapestries contributed to a process of storytelling in which the clerical elite of late medieval cities legitimated and defended their position in the social sphere.Weigert focuses on three of the most spectacular and little-studied tapestry series preserved from the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries: Lives of Saints Piat and Eleutherius (Notre-Dame, Tournai), Life of Saint Steven (Saint-Steven, Auxerre [now Musée du Moyen Age, Paris]), and Life of Saints Gervasius and Protasius (Saint-Julien, Le Mans). Each of these tapestries, measuring over forty meters in length, included elements that have traditionally been defined as either lay or clerical. On the prescribed days when the tapestries were displayed, the liturgical performance for which they were the setting sought to merge the history and patron saint of the local community with the universal history of the Christian church. Weigert combines a detailed analysis of the narrative structure of individual images with a discussion of the particular social circumstances in which they were produced and perceived. Weaving Sacred Stories is thereby significant not only to the history of medieval art but also to art history and cultural studies in general.

Navajo rugs set the gold standard for handwoven textiles in the U.S. But what about the people who create these treasures? Spider Woman's Children is the inside story, told by two women who are both deeply embedded in their own culture and considered among the very most skillful and artistic of Navajo weavers today. Barbara Teller Ornelas and Lynda Teller Pete are fifth-generation weavers who grew up at the fabled Two Grey Hills trading post. Their family and clan connections give them rare insight, as this volume takes readers into traditional hogans, remote trading posts, reservation housing neighborhoods, and urban apartments to meet weavers who follow the paths of their ancestors, who innovate with new designs and techniques, and who uphold time-honored standards of excellence. Throughout the text are beautifully depicted examples of the finest, most mindful weaving this rich tradition has to offer.

"Based on interviews and conversations in collaboration with the artist."