In the millefleur style, plants are dispersed across a field on a green background representing grass to give the impression of a flowery meadow, covering the whole decorated field evenly. At the time they were called
verdures in French. Flowering plants, shown on a typically darker background, often include recognizable species. Specific plants, animals, and their arrangement likely carried symbolic associations. Some tapestries include large figures whose meaning is not always apparent, which seems to derive from the division of labour under the
guild system, so that the weavers were obliged to repeat figure designs by members of the
painters' guild, but could design the backgrounds themselves. Such was the case in Brussels after a lawsuit between the two groups in 1476. The subjects are generally secular, but some are religious. Millefleur style was most popular in late 15th and early 16th century French and
Flemish tapestry, with the best known examples including
The Lady and the Unicorn and
The Hunt of the Unicorn. These are from what has been called the "classic" period, where each "bouquet" or plant is individually designed, improvised by the weavers as they worked, while later tapestries, probably mostly made in
Brussels, usually have mirror images of plants on the right and left sides of the piece, suggesting a
cartoon re-used twice. The precise origin of the pieces has been much argued about, but the only surviving example whose original payment can be traced was a large heraldic millefleur carpet made for Duke
Charles the Bold of Burgundy in Brussels, part of which is now in the
Bern Historical Museum. The beginnings of the style may be seen in earlier tapestries. The famous
Apocalypse Tapestry series (Paris, 1377–82) has several backgrounds covered in vegetal motifs, but these are springing from tendrils in the way of illuminated manuscript borders. In fact most of the very large sets do not fully use the style, with the meadow of flowers extending right to the top of the picture space. The early
Devonshire Hunting Tapestries (1420s) have naturalistic landscape backgrounds, seen from a somewhat elevated viewpoint, so that the lower two-thirds or so of each scene has a millefleur background, but this gives way to forest or sea and sky at the top of the tapestry.
The Justice of Trajan and Herkinbald (about 1450) and most of
The Hunt of the Unicorn set (about 1500) are similar. From the main period, each tapestry in
The Lady and the Unicorn set has three distinct zones of millefleur background: the island containing the figures, where the plants are densely arranged, an upper background zone where they are arranged in vertical bands, and accompany animals at very varied scales, and a lower zone where a single row of plants have slight gaps between them. During the 1800s, the millefleur style was revived and incorporated into numerous tapestry designs by
Morris & Co. The company's
Pomona (1885) and
The Achievement of the Grail (1895–96) tapestries demonstrate an adherence to the medieval millefleur style. Other tapestries such as their
The Adoration of the Magi (1890) and
The Failure of Sir Gawain (c. 1890s) use the style more liberally, borrowing the flowers' often flat, splayed appearance, but overlapping them and using them as part of a landscape and not as a purely decorative backdrop.
The Adoration of the Magi was one of the company's most popular designs, with ten versions woven between 1890 and 1907. (Toulouse) Mon seul désir (La Dame à la licorne) - Musée de Cluny Paris.jpg|
À mon seul désir, from the set
The Lady and the Unicorn, late 15th century File:Tapisserie Beaune 143.jpg|15th-century tapestry File:Cluny-Dame à la licorne-Detail 16.JPG|Detail of one of the set
The Lady and the Unicorn File:Tapisserie Millefiori Salzburg Museum.jpg|Millefleurs in a heraldic tapestry for the
Bishop of Salzburg, after 1519 File:Adoration of the Magi Tapestry.png|
The Adoration of the Magi woven by
Morris & Co in the late 1800s. ==Indian carpets==