Henry VIII, king of England from 1509 to 1547, is famous for many things. But not everyone knows he was a great collector. For one thing, he collected wives. He married six different women in an age where divorce was basically forbidden and wives didn't cooperate by dropping dead on their own very often. The king also collected houses. He laid claim to numerous great homes and palaces, including Westminster, Berkhamsted, Fotheringhay, Warwick, Kenilworth, and some of his favorites: Greenwich, Whitehall, and Hampton Court. He even had Royal Residences in the Tower of London. One of King Henry's biggest collections was tapestries. He eventually collected more than 2,000 of these woven pictures to spruce up Hampton Court Palace and his other royal residences.

But why would the King spend a lot of money and energy to collect woven pictures to decorate his walls? What was behind these expensive wall hangings?

France and Southern Netherlands

Tapestry making was huge industry in northern France and southern Netherlands during the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Tapestry is a form of textile art created by skilled craftsmen. The pieces were woven by hand on a weaving-loom. Weaving a tapestry required that each thread be carefully placed on the loom by hand. This painstaking process allowed workers to create complex designs that included intricate features for people, animals, and plants. Usually the chain threads were made out of linen or Picardy wool. The striking threads were made of Italian silk or gold and silver threads imported from Cyprus. Textile workers and guilds flourished in Belgium and France, ad tapestries created there  Hampton Court Taxis were exported all over Europe.

Tapestries were sometimes woven in sets. A set of tapestries often told a biblical or mythical story through a series of pictures. This art in woven tapestry was intended to produce illusions of what reality should be-a more intellectual, more scientific, more grand world. This world could follow the owner wherever he went, as tapestries were portable and could be transported from one residence to another.

Wealthy and powerful men collected tapestries because they could really impress visitors. Before he had to give Hampton Court to King Henry, Cardinal Wolsey sent London merchant Richard Gresham to Brussels with 1,000 marks to purchase the finest tapestries he could find. The Venetian ambassador told this story of his visit to Wolsey: "One has to traverse eight rooms before one reaches his audience chamber, and they are all hung with tapestry, which is changed once a week" (1).

Hampton Court Palace

In September 1528, King Henry became displeased with Wolsey's work and took over Hampton Court Palace. King Henry embarked on an enormous rebuilding project, creating new kitchens, a Council Chamber, and a series of private rooms for himself. In addition, Henry rebuilt the Great Hall, which featured great walls for displaying tapestries. To decorate Hampton Court and other royal residences, Henry collected tapestries to communicate his wealth and power. The tapestries adorned such important public rooms as the Great Hall and the Great Watching Chamber.

One of the most famous series in Henry's collection is the History of Abraham series, which he commissioned specifically for Hampton Court. This series was woven in Brussels about 1540 by Wilhelm Pannemaker to the designs of Bernard van Orley. The History of Abraham tapestries include ten separate pieces, each of which is approximately sixteen feet high and twenty-six feet wide. These tapestries are of amazing quality, featuring highly skilled weaving and a high metal thread count, with many gold and silver threads. In fact, the amount of gold makes them one of the most opulent products of the Brussels industry.