The American Heritage dictionary defines a tapestry as a heavy cloth woven with rich, often varicolored designs or scenes, usually hung on walls for decoration and sometimes used to cover furniture. Another statement, from a craft book, is that a Tapestry is Art in a Plain Weave. Occasionally, nowadays, one hears people refer to a needlepoint wall hanging as a tapestry, but this is not correct needlepoint is stitched on canvas. A tapestry is woven on a loom.
Weaving actually has its roots in ancient basketry, which requires stiff fibers. The invention of a loom allowed the use of flexible fibers, which holds the lengthwise warp strands taut while the crosswise weft strands are woven in.
In a tomb in Egypt, a pottery dish, dated 4400 BC, was found. On this dish was a picture of a loom that appeared to be based on pegs in the ground that held the rods to which the warp threads were harnessed. A loom, not too unlike todays tapestry loom, appeared in Egypt during the Eighteenth Dynasty, 1567 to 1320 BC. The Navajo Indians still use a similar loom.
Looms changed little until the eighteenth century, when different inventions, mostly by Englishmen,...
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