Franses Tapestry Archive

The tradition & historical record

The Franses Tapestry Archive and Library in London is devoted to the study of European tapestries and figurative textiles. It is the world’s largest academic research resource on the subject. ¹

Established in 1987, the archive was co-founded by Simon Franses, a director of the Franses Gallery and Tom Campbell, a tapestry scholar. After 7 years of full-time work, Dr Campbell moved to New York to take up a curatorial post at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He went on to curate two landmark Tapestry exhibitions Tapestry in the Renaissance: Art and Magnificence (2002) and Tapestry in the Baroque: Threads of Splendor (2007). In 2008, he was appointed director of the museum. The vast collection of images began to be collected by Dr Campbell with a team of research assistants, and was gathered from across Europe and America. The Archive has continued to expand over 29 years. It now holds over 240,000 visual records of European tapestries accessible by subject, date, country of manufacture and place of origin. These records have been collected and catalogued from several hundred museums, libraries, auction houses, trade and private collections, and allows precise identification of individual works (as well as visual reconstruction of dispersed sets of tapestries). ¹

To collect images and data on every significant European tapestry and figurative textile. To identify, classify, cross-reference and conserve these. To increase knowledge by collecting books, related articles, and documentation on design, commissioning, origin, production, use, value, provenance. To increase appreciation and understanding of this art form. ¹

The images are stored under almost 900 main headings from Landmark Series of European Tapestries to more modest works, altar frontal, table carpets, cushions and upholstery. ¹

The Collection includes: ¹

Visual records: 240,000 + Reference Books: 2,760 Articles: 3,600 Catalogues of major collections: 450 Sale catalogues and periodicals: 20,000 ¹

The V & A Marillier Tapestry Subject Catalogue, fifty volumes of script and photographs, donated to the Nation in 1945 Musée Royaux d’art et d’histoire, Brussels, Archive of Flemish Tapestries The Burrell Collection, Glasgow Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris ¹

Donald King, donated by Monique King Edith Standen Jack Franses ¹

The text above is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Franses Tapestry Archive”, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence. ¹

Franses Tapestry Archive is research resource on European tapestries, according to the structured record cited below. This entry was generated automatically from that record and has not yet been reviewed by a person familiar with the tradition. ²

The source record links this tradition to 1 external register, which can be verified through the citation. ²