A brief history of tapestry wet cleaning systems at the Victoria and Albert Museum

The Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) was established in the mid nineteenth century to encourage, in the words of the authorities, ‘the improvement of public taste in design’ and ‘the application of fine art to objects of utility’. It has developed into Britain’s national museum of art and design, with a particularly rich collection of textiles amongst which are approximately 350 tapestries spanning the fifteenth to twenty-first centuries.