[2] Tapestries were a popular luxury good that used visual imagery to entertain and delight the audiences of aristocratic households.

[1][5] The wealthy used tapestries to cover entire walls, which had a practical use because they aided in insulation during colder months.

[1] The sport of hunting was a common subject in tapestries as well as a favored activity amongst the elite members of society.

[6] Though hunting was primarily reserved for members of the court, they were often not the ones engaging in the act of locating, chasing, and capturing the animals.

[2] The tapestries would have been produced by a large workshop of skilled weavers, working to designs made by an artist.

[8][2] Such is the case with the Boar and Bear Hunt, considered low-warp, which has errors of reversed inscriptions and two left-handed men, probably unintended.

[3][2] The men are shown carrying spears, which have cross-bars designed to stop the charge of the boar and keep its tusks at a safe distance.

[10] The lady crossing the stream in the centre foreground has "Monte le Desire" inscribed on her flowing sleeve.

[3] Intended to be read from left to right, the scene shows the sport of falconry and it is the only tapestry of the four that follows on one hunt throughout the piece.

[2] A man towards the top of the composition holds a v-shaped lure in the air to call back the hawk.

[2] In the bottom right, another man bends to grab his lure, with a successfully caught duck in his other hand.

[2][3] Towards the centre of the composition, next to a small-scale castle that represents a port, young boys plunder a swan’s nest.

[2][3][1] A small mill next to a stream divides the tapestry, and on the right there are several figures engaged in the sport of hawking.

[3][2] In addition to hunting and hawking, members of the court are socializing in their finest dress, adding to the idealized nature of the scene.

[2] In the 1590s, Hardwick Hall in Derbyshire was built and became the home for the extremely wealthy widow,[1][3] whose inheritance passed to the line of her second husband, who eventually became the Cavendish Dukes of Devonshire.

Linda Woolley suggests that Bess came to own the tapestries via her last husband George Talbot, 6th Earl of Shrewsbury, who had been married to the countess before he died in 1590.

[7] William George Spencer Cavendish, 6th Duke of Devonshire used the cut tapestries to insulate the Long Gallery at Hardwick Hall in the 1840s.

[2][3][13] During a visit to Hardwick in 1899, Arthur Long convinced the seventh Duke of Devonshire to let the Victoria & Albert Museum restore the tapestries.

[2][3] The tapestries were then brought to the main home of the Dukes of Devonshire, Chatsworth House, and exhibited periodically.