Why is bayeux tapestry not really a tapestry?

Answer 1

The definition of tapestry is: tap·es·try n.pl. tap·es·tries

1. A heavy cloth woven with rich, often varicolored designs or scenes, usually hung on walls for decoration and sometimes used to cover furniture.

2. Something felt to resemble a richly and complexly designed cloth: the tapestry of world history.

tr.v. tap·es·tried (--strd), tap·es·try·ing, tap·es·tries (--strz)

(from the Free Online Dictionary, Thesaurus and Encyclopedia.)

Technically, because the designs are embroidered onto the background and not woven into the fabric, the Bayeux Tapestry is actually an embroidery and not a tapestry. Among pictorial cloths of this scale, tapestries are far more common than embroideries, as the tapestry is woven on a loom while the process of embroidering stitch-by-stitch usually lends itself more to small-scale works. Because of this, many people have come to associate the term tapestry with all large scale pictorial cloths whose design is carried out by thread, without realizing the difference between the threads being part of the woven fabric versus being embroidered onto an already existing cloth. In the case of the Bayeux Tapestry, the term was incorrectly applied because of this lack of distinction, but it has been retained largely for the sake of tradition and its popularity.1 1 R. Howard Bloch, A Needle in the Right Hand of God: The Norman Conquest of 1066 and the Making and Meaning of the Bayeux Tapestry (New York: Random House, 2006), xiii-xiv.

Answer 2

first of all it marks one of the greatest events in English history, but it is important because it lets us see from what each army was composed, plus it presents the events of the battle. It also presents the medieval arms used and the apparel of the soldiers.

Answer 3

The Bayeux Tapestry is actually an embroidery not a tapestry because it's sewn not woven.

Answer 4

tapestry