The case study of a “tinkered” tapestry

Abstract

Tapestry is a luxury item before being a work of art. By the very fact of its function, tapestry undergoes transformations since all time. We cut or add borders, we cut large format tapestry into several pieces, and then, we re-sew them, all of this acts to put them to the dimension of surfaces that the tapestry must cover. This presentation would like to dwell on a particular case of a "tinkered" tapestry, the example of which is very useful today for the art historian to understand the phenomenon of usage, far from the notion of heritage we have today. What could be considered wasteful is actually reuse. What appears as vestiges of the past can also be useful for finding lost original compositions. Relying on archival documents, this is what I propose to do from a tapestry woven at the Beauvais Manufactory in the late eighteenth century.