The term tapestry is often applied to any hangings of mediæval workmanship whether woven on a frame or not. This use of the word is incorrect. Tapestry is a fabric woven with coloured wools on to warp threads in a loom or frame, in which the weft completely conceals the warp. It is woven all in one piece. This distinguishes it from embroidery or other needlework to which stitches are added after the groundwork of the fabric has been detached from the frame. The worker weaves directly from a design or cartoon which is supplied to him. Tapestry frames are of two kinds. In the first the warp threads are arranged in a perpendicular frame, and the weaver sits before his work. This is known as high-warp (_haute lisse_) weaving, and is the method in use at the celebrated manufactory at Gobelins in France. In the other method the warp threads are stretched horizontally, and the weaver must bend over his work. This is known as low-warp (_basse lisse_) weaving, and is the process followed at Beauvais. On the whole the high warp weaving gives a fabric of firmer and finer texture. The rest of the process is precisely similar. The weft threads of different colours, each attached to a separate bobbin or shuttle, are passed alternately behind and in front of the warp threads, leaving a little dot of colour behind. The second thread will, of course, take up the warp thread the first has passed over, and pass in front of that which the first one has passed behind. The two threads are then pushed together with a comb until they fall into one straight line. The warp is now completely concealed. Tapestry weaving is an art that stands alone. Like furniture, tapestry was of utilitarian origin, and cannot, therefore, be judged by the standards applied to painting and the purely decorative arts. As originally used in ancient buildings, it was hung some feet from the walls to serve as a draught screen, or was suspended between pillars to shut off one apartment from another. It was generally hung, therefore, in undulating folds, the stiff panels and upholsteries of later workmanship being a spurious growth. The decorative value of such hangings was, of course, seized on at once by the wealthy, who alone could afford them, and from the earliest times tapestries became things of beauty. But in estimating their artistic value we have to remember their original use. A tapestry curtain woven with a symmetrical central design would appear quite distorted when pushed aside by some one entering a room. Central unity, therefore, the great merit of painting, is in tapestry artistically bad. The designs that are most suitable are duplicated or repeated designs, with a crowded background. These will secure a certain uniformity in the suspended fabric. For this reason, therefore, such panels as Raphael’s _Acts of the Apostles_, though fine specimens of pictorial art, are, as tapestries, artistically faulty, beautiful though they are when considered merely as works of art.