There is a custom of hanging carpets on the walls in northwest China since ancient times, and some of them are used as tents to keep out the cold or for decoration. The earliest tapestry in China is the fragment of the plain woven "portrait" carpet of the Western Han Dynasty unearthed from Loulan ancient country site in Lop Nur, Xinjiang. At the beginning of the 20th century, Beijing and Tianjin also produced some tapestries with the artistic style of Chinese painting. In 1960s and 1970s, tapestry production developed rapidly, and many tapestries with oil painting artistic style appeared in Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai and Inner Mongolia. 1974, the government of China presented the United Nations with a large tapestry of the Great Wall made in Tianjin, which was 10 m wide, 5 m high and weighed 280 kg, and was displayed in the lounge of the United Nations headquarters building.

The oldest existing tapestry in Europe is 1 1 century French-made Bayeux tapestry. It is a portrait tapestry with the theme of historical war, woven with wool thread and linen thread in plain weave. Since the 20th century, modernist painters Picasso and Matisse have also participated in the design of tapestry drawings. The traditional plain brocade in Europe is declining day by day, and it is replaced by various hand-woven techniques and fiber art brocade with abstract artistic style.