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The story of textiles in mid-century America was enriched by differing opinions about their multi-dimensional role as objects of art, design, and handcraft, and by the revival of pictorial tapestry, especially French imports. This paper examines the Cuttoli Tapestry edition of French-produced tapestries, named after itséditeur, Marie Cuttoli (1879–1973), and explores how these tapestries emerged as a middle ground between painting, mural, and textile, bringing to the forefront recurring tensions between fine and applied art hierarchies, third-party producers, and the concept of reproduction. While these pictorial tapestries, which varied in size from medium to large scale, functioned much as easel paintings did, earning the name “easel tapestries,” they were decidedly different from easel paintings due to the materials, production processes, and resemblances to the original design. The Cuttoli project gave artists the opportunity to explore alternatives to painting and to reach new patrons and methods of display; through the marketing of limited editions, the tapestries remained luxury art objects, although never as celebrated or expensive as “the original.” This paper documents the complicated chronology and provenance of a seminal twentieth-century pictorial tapestry project by exploring how the Cuttoli Tapestries were perceived and understood by critics and patrons during their debut and subsequent display in pre- and postwar America. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Fortunato Depero (1892–1960) was a Futurist artist who worked in a variety of artistic mediums, from painting and graphic design to furniture and textiles. His work in textiles, created and produced in close collaboration with his wife, Rosetta Amadori, can be considered the most important development in his artistic career, as it comprised a large portion of his creative production. Yet this work has been largely overlooked. Many reasons explain this oversight, including categorizing inconsistencies – for example, his textiles have been described as embroidery, needlework, tapestry, patchwork, and cloth mosaic – and the persistent relegation of textiles to the realm of crafts and domestic arts rather than art, which has meant that his work in textiles has not been a priority for scholars and conservators of Futurism. This paper places Depero's textiles within the context of early-twentieth-century modernist artistic activities, and demonstrates the centrality of his textile work to his artisticoeuvre. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]