Tapissier. [Tapestry-Weaving]

1771. DIDEROT. Tapestry-weaving, in 3 parts: 7 pp., 45 plates, of which 11 are double-page. From vol. 8. Folio, bound in half terra-cotta morocco over salmon cloth boards, gilt. Tapissier, with a view of the Boutique, and the many products available therein, including curtains, bedspreads, upholstery, and so forth. With two additional suites, entitled Tapisserie de basse-lisse des Gobelins and Tapisserie de haute-lisse des Gobelins, which illustrate the practice of the famous Gobelins tapestry factories. These tapestries were decorated with pictorial subjects; painted; embroidered; woven in colours, gold, and silver thread, and so forth. Alan Summerly Cole distinguishes between the practices of Gobelins and Beauvais: "At the Gobelins, the warp threads are stretched in frames standing vertically (high warp or haute lisse): at Beauvais in frames placed horizontally with the ground (low warp or basse lisse)." This suite of plates and text derives from the great French eighteenth-century Encyclopédie edited by Denis Diderot and Jean Le Rond D'Alembert. The Diderot & D'Alembert Encyclopédie remains "A monument in the history of European thought; the acme of the age of reason; a prime motivating force in undermining the Ancien Régime and in heralding the French Revolution; a permanent source for all aspects of eighteenth-century civilization..." (Printing and the Mind of Man).