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.

Tapestries uncovers the unique patterns that you weave throughout life. At a time of immense interest in biography, here is a unique set of keys to understanding the pattern and rhythms of your life. The unfolding phases of life are presented as the 'warp' of personal growth. You are invited to consider the 'shuttle' of the threads you use as the 'weft' of your life story. These threads include your temperament, gender, love, family, ethnicity, birth order, and developing relationships. A vivid picture of adult growth is presented. You can follow twelve very different people and their stories as they go through each life phase and wonder what will happen next. You can consider how you would respond to the choices they face. Life's dilemmas are explored: career versus parenting and choices related to old age. This opens up options: which roads to take in life and encouragement to reflect.

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

This classic book, now completely revised and expanded, has long been a favorite of both teachers and students of tapestry weaving. Learn to weave tapestry on any kind of loom, vertical or horizontal. Take an intriguing journey to make an elaborate, but logical, tapestry sampler. The process is explained step-by-step and illustrated with over 300 beautiful color photographs and diagrams of tapestry techniques. Along the way, color theories applicable to tapestry are explained. You will be inspired by the ancient art form explored on these colorful pages. Treasures from museums and prominent contemporary artists relate the historic significance of tapestries and their limitless range of visual power. Learn how archival finishing and mounting your handwoven textile completes the project. A chapter on designing for tapestry provides tools for translating future concepts into compositions. Be a part of this ancient, yet completely modern, weaving tradition.

Once ideas and images come to mind, the next step in weaving your tapestry--interpreting these into effective compositions--may be challenging. Learn here, in ways that relate specifically to tapestry art, the design basics you need to make your best work. Renowned master weaver Scanlin offers 60 step-by-step "explorations" that lead you from understanding design concepts in your head to using them on your loom. Be inspired to explore "weavable" ways to manage line, shape, color, texture, emphasis, balance, rhythm, and more for results that bring your tapestries to a new level. In Part 1, dive into the fundamentals of design. Parts 2 and 3 hold explorations--exercises with a tapestry twist. Part 4 teaches ways to turn designs into cartoons. A resource treasure trove offers ideas for finishing tapestries (essential to the design's completeness), helpful templates, glossaries, and other core information to carry forward on your creative path.

Among the most popular attractions at The Cloisters, the medieval branch of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, is a set of tapestries depicting the hunt of the fabled unicorn. Each of the seven exquisite tapestries is reproduced in large colorplates and with a wealth of color details. Created in the Netherlands in 1495-1505, they contain supremely memorable images - from the vulnerable unicorn and the individualized faces of the hunters to the naturalistically depicted flora and fauna. The author also looks at the construction of the tapestries and the historical and cultural context in which they were woven.