tapestry

Etymology

From Middle English tapiestre, from Old French tapisserie (“tapestry”), from Ancient Greek τάπης (tápēs), from an Iranian source.

noun

1. A heavy woven cloth, often with decorative pictorial designs, normally hung on walls.
   Sepia Delft tiles surrounded the fireplace, their crudely drawn Biblical scenes in faded cyclamen blending with the pinkish pine, while above them, instead of a mantelshelf, there was an archway high enough to form a balcony with slender balusters and a tapestry-hung wall behind. 1963, Margery Allingham, chapter 3, in The China Governess
2. (by extension) Anything with variegated or complex details.
   European adventurers found themselves within a watery world, a tapestry of streams, channels, wetlands, lakes and lush riparian meadows enriched by floodwaters from the Mississippi River. 2013 January-February, Nancy Langston, “The Fraught History of a Watery World”, in American Scientist, volume 101, number 1, archived from the original on 2013-01-22, page 59

verb

1. (transitive, intransitive) To decorate with tapestry, or as if with a tapestry.
   We had run above twenty miles when the sun set, carpeting the sea, and tapestrying the sky with a rare unison of delicate green and golden hues […] 1833, Adolphus Slade, Records of Travels in Turkey, Greece, &c., "Captain Pasha's Alarm", page 152
   The banqueting-hall, all open to the sky, and with thick curtains of ivy tapestrying the walls, and grass and weeds growing on the arches that overpass it, is indescribably beautiful. September 13, 1854, Nathaniel Hawthorne, English Note-Books, "Conway Castle"
   I present Bosnavina to its Duchess, I kiss the hem of her Majesty's robe and will tapestry her Palace with conquered flags. 1921, Israel Zangwill, The Cockpit: Romantic Drama in Three Acts, page 255