The Case of the Missing Lady
Both sets of Unicorn Tapestries have sustained damages over the years and undergone several rounds of restoration. Some frayed and missing elements can be replaced with relative confidence, such as mille fleur backgrounds or parts of trees and gowns. But others are impossible to replicate in the face of lost cartoons (original design) and no […]
Fair Annie: Pretty as a Liability
The cultural desire for women to be forever young and fair comes at a price, especially when a couple faces a mid-life crisis. The man (who was distinctly the more powerful of the two) might decide to find a way to cast off the old wife for someone new and younger. This certainly is a […]
Belle Femme: Beauty, Transition, and the Dawn of the 16th Century
What makes a woman beautiful? The answer to this can certainly be quite different across cultures and eras. Here I’ll explore the changing standards of female beauty and dress during that interesting cusp between the late medieval period and the Renaissance. Fashions certainly had their roller coaster ride across the medieval period. Waists were loose, […]
Willie O’ Winsbury
Documented as Child Ballad #100, with many variants, this border ballad has strong Scottish roots. Through my research, I found Winsbury to have been a Scottish clan name, though I could not find an actual location (like a town or castle with the name Winsbury). If you know more about the Winbsury story, I would […]
Tapestry Gown: Fabrics on Display
I was intrigued by the lustrous gowns displayed in tapestry, not only from the weaver’s perspective but also from the costumer’s perspective. I started by choosing an era somewhat earlier than the Unicorn Tapestries (mid 1400’s), where fashion is shown quite resplendently in the “Devonshire Hunting Tapestries.” In this period, the waist was high, with […]
Second Study–Fabrics
My second study when preparing for the “Deceiving the Hunters” tapestry project focused on the representation of different kinds of cloth as draped on the human figure. Because so many tapestries of this era depict human figures, and most of these figures are sumptuously dressed in the fashions of their day, working realistic textiles in […]
A Rich Man’s Eden: Gardens in Tapestry
There’s no mistaking Europe’s love of its gardens. While on a study travel program through St. Olaf College in 2008, I had the chance to stroll through some beautifully kept estate gardens from the 16th Century, with their peculiar “follies,” water features, and of course the roses with stems as big around as my arm. […]
First Study–Verdure
Before embarking on the full-sized tapestry project, I knew that I needed to hone some skills and experiment. My previous tapestry work had been much more simplistic in detail and shading, and there were two areas I wanted to give special focus–verdure (especially leaves) and fabrics (especially velvet). For the first, I started with an […]
The Maiden, the Unicorn, and Symbolic Tranfer
The ancient ties of the maiden and the unicorn (as discussed in the earlier post “Who is She?–The Lady and the Unicorn”) stayed as an amazingly stable narrative from early times through “The Hunt of the Unicorn” tapestry series. The balance between the wild and the domestic, coupled with the gentle lure of the lovely […]
What Makes Tapestry Unique?
The word “tapestry” can often be used with very broad strokes in our language–from implying that something is colorful, comprised of many parts, or decorative. But the word tapestry is actually much more specific. In fact, it denotes a very small subset of textiles. I’ll deconstruct the confusion in this post, with helpful illustrations. As […]