Tapestries hold their value because they are so painstaking to produce the sort of artistic endeavor that makes perfect sense only for a monarchy with unlimited funds, time, and craftsmen.
You first need an artist to sketch the design and a painter to turn that sketch into an oil that is the same size as the tapestry. Skilled masters then weave the tapestries using silk, wool, and sometimes gold or silver threads.
But above all you need patience because it will take a good weaver an entire day to weave a surface about the size of the human hand

The term "Goblins" applies today indifferently to all kinds of tapestry. They can as well be Low wrap Tapestries, High ones, Tapestry made with Jacquard mechanics or of Tapestries stitched with needle named in US needlepoint. In these pages we present to you the history of the manufacture which gave its name to the Tapestry and specify what one understands by High wrap and Low wrap.

• GOBELINS MANUFACTURE
• HÔTEL ROYAL OF THE GOBELINS
• THE GOBELINS
• BEAUVAIS
• THE SAVONNERIE
• CENTRE NATIONAL DES ARTS PLASTIQUES (in French)

Hôtel Royal of the Goblins.
In consequence of an edict of Louis XIV. Monseigneur Colbert having restored and enriched with magnificence the palates of the king, in particular the Louvre and Tuileries, thought of creating a manufacture for pieces of furniture suitable with the splendour of these buildings: with this project in sight it called in all the kingdom and in the foreign nations the workmen able in various arts and art's work; in particular painters, weavers, sculptors, goldsmiths, ébonists, et cætera. To do the establishment envisaged firm and durable, it advised the king to buy the Goblins property, so that these artists can work there with their eases. It issued for their direction a system of laws, or policy, in seventeen articles. By the latter it is regulated, that new manufacture will be under the administration of a superintendant of the "arts and buildings of the king", that in said manufacture the ordinary Masters will be responsible for all the actions and processes brought by unspecified of the people, their servants and people in charge; that no other work of tapestry will be imported from any other country, et cætera. The Goblins since remained the first manufacture of this kind in the world. Quantity of finest and noblest art work which was produced by it, and numbers of the best talents which it arouses, is quite simply incredible; the current condition of blooming of decorative arts of France is, in a great thanks, debtor to it. The work of the tapestry, in particular, is its glory. During the superintendance of M. Colbert, and of its successor M. of Louvois, the realization of the tapestry is practised with a degree of perfection, seldom lower than what was made by the English and in other provinces of France. Battles of Alexandre, four seasons, four elements, palates of the king, and a series of the principal actions of the life of Louis XIV, from its first marriage to the first conquest of Franche county, conceived by M. Le Brun, director of the manufacture of the Goblins, are master pieces in their kind.

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On the Gobelins avenue, the building has been buid in 1912 by Formige after the fire of 1871. It is curently now refitted to accomodate a gallery of exhibition.