Textiles and Dress

Devonshire Hunting Tapestries

The Devonshire Hunting Tapestries are a group of four medieval tapestries, probably woven in Arras, Artois, France, between about 1430 and 1450. The tapestries are known as Boar and Bear Hunt, Falconry, Swan and Otter Hunt, and Deer Hunt. These enormous works, each over 13 feet tall and altogether about 133 feet wide, depict men and women in fashionable dress of the early fifteenth century hunting in forests. The tapestries formerly belonged to the Dukes of Devonshire, and were hung on the walls at Hardwick Hall in Derbyshire. In 1957, they became the property of the British Government in the tax settlement after the death of the 10th Duke of Devonshire. The tapestries were then allocated to the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, where they remain. Few fifteenth-century tapestries of this size and grandeur still exist, which is what makes the Devonshire Hunting Tapestries so exceedingly rare.

Also on this shelf

See also

• ▸Informal wear
• ▸Horseshoe
• ▸Aalst, Belgium

Uncatalogued shelf

Text from Wikipedia; plate via Wikimedia Commons. Text CC BY-SA 4.0; plate freely licensed (see Commons). Source record. Images and catalogue data are reproduced from open-access collections.