Latest news with #BayeuxTapestry
Daily Mail
7 days ago
- General
- Daily Mail
Bayeux Tapestry should be re-named the 'Canterbury Embroidery' because it was probably made in Kent and ISN'T a tapestry, historian says
The Bayeux Tapestry should be renamed the 'Canterbury Embroidery' because it was almost certainly made in Britain and isn't technically a tapestry, a historian has said. Dr David Musgrove said the 230-foot long artefact was most likely woven in Kent rather than France and was created using an embroidery technique, meaning it is not a tapestry. The academic, who has a PhD in medieval landscape archaeology, spoke after news that the 11th-century work depicting the 1066 Norman Conquest is to go on display at the British Museum next year. The expert said the artefact's trip presents academics with a chance to confirm that the treasure was created in the UK. Dr Musgrove is host of the BBC 's History Extra podcast. He said on the latest episode: 'It's an embroidery, so you've got woven elements on a linen backing. 'The wool has been dyed, so there's various different colours that are used. 'So you could make the argument that it should be called the Canterbury embroidery rather than the Bayeux Tapestry, because it was probably made in Canterbury. 'That's what most people would think and it's an embroidery, not a tapestry. 'But that's just not quite as snazzy, is it? 'You're not going to get people queuing around the block at the British Museum to go and see that.' The Bayeux Tapestry depicts the events leading up to the Norman Conquest of England, led by William, Duke of Normandy challenging Harold II, King of England. When the artefact returns to Britain, Anglo-Saxon treasures from the Sutton Hoo ship burial will go in the other direction to France for a temporary period. French president Emmanuel Macron revealed during his trip to Britain last month that King Charles helped secure a deal to return the tapestry to England. He claimed France did its best not to loan the artwork but that His Majesty helped get the deal over the line. The embroidery is thought to date to within a few years of the Battle of Hastings. Dr Musgrove told the podcast: 'We know a lot about the way it would have been produced, because people have had a chance to study it. 'We know that there were different panels that were stitched together. 'And you can see actually that they must have been made separately because there were mistakes in the way that the panels are aligned so they're kind of little bits which don't stack up. 'So people, we assume, were probably working in separate teams. 'It was probably women who were doing it, Anglo-Saxon seamstresses who were probably doing it. 'There was a rich tradition of Anglo-Saxon seamstresses working here so we assume it was probably them.' When the embroidery comes to Britain, academics will have a rare chance to look at the back of it, Dr Musgrove said. He continued: 'And it's been quite hard to get to the back of it because there's various different layers that have been added onto it in the intervening century. 'So it's quite hard to actually get there. 'Then we will probably find out lots of really interesting things about the way it was produced. 'And if we can do any sort of scientific analysis, and I can't imagine for one moment there will be an opportunity to do anything which is in any way destructive to it. 'But if we can do any scientific analysis to kind of see where these woollen threads came from, where the sheep came from that produced it, where the dyes were from, where the flax for the linen was grown, then that will really sort of help to give us a clue to if that idea that it was made in England is actually true.' Artificial intelligence could even be used to analyse the features, the expert added. 'If you can feed it into a computer and get it to sort of correlate and work out similarities between bits, then we might learn an awful lot of things. 'But we haven't had the chance because it's been rightly in a climate-controlled case and you can't get to it. 'So this is a real opportunity to learn some stuff about it.' The tapestry will be on display at the British Museum in the autumn of next year until July 2027. Timeline of the Bayeux Tapestry 1066: Between seven and twelve thousand Norman soldiers defeat an English army of a similar size at what is now Battle, East Sussex 1476: The embroidered cloth depicting the battle is referred to for the first time in an inventory of Bayeux Cathedral 1732-3: Antiquarian Smart Lethieullier writes the first detailed English account of the tapestry while living in Paris - but it is not published till 1767 1792: During the French Revolution, the precious artwork was declared public property and confiscated to be used as a covering for wagons - but it was saved by a lawyer who hid it in his home 1804: In a move dripping in symbolism, Napoleon - under the impression France was about to invade and conquer Britain - had the tapestry temporarily moved to Paris for display 1870: The tapestry is removed from Bayeux once again during the Franco-Prussian War - but it is moved back two years later 1944: The Gestapo removed the tapestry to the Louvre in Paris - just days before the German withdrawal. A message from Heinrich Himmler - who coveted the cloth because it is a part of Germanic history - is believed to imply the Nazis planned to take it to Berlin
France 24
24-07-2025
- Entertainment
- France 24
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The Guardian
18-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
The perils of bringing the Bayeux tapestry to Britain
Patrick Wintour likens the British Museum's loan/swap of the Bayeux tapestry for treasures from Sutton Hoo to France's 1963 loan of the Mona Lisa to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York as examples of art's service in international diplomacy (The diplomacy of art: Bayeux tapestry loan shows cultural gifts still matter, 11 July). The example is inauspicious. While at the Met, the Leonardo was stored in a strongroom overnight. One night, a fire sprinkler malfunctioned and sprayed water over the picture for hours. Fortunately, it was face up and therefore the paint layers were protected by the glass cover. Had it been face down, its panel would have been saturated and warped, with horrendous consequences. The incident was covered up – and was only disclosed (unofficially) three decades later by the ex-Met director Thomas Hoving in his DaleyDirector, ArtWatch UK Last year, you published an item about Mia Hansson and the replica of the Bayeux tapestry she was making (Experience, 26 April 2024). I wonder if she has finished it yet?Tony MeacockNorwich I nearly covered myself in my breakfast porridge when I read that the Labour MP Helena Dollimore wants the Bayeux tapestry to be carted around the country like a collection of rolled-up sheets (Call for British Museum to take Bayeux tapestry to '1066 country', 14 July). This is an ancient collection of threads that has survived for so much longer than most items of fabric and it must be treated with care, gentleness and caution. I have misgivings about it leaving its current home for even five minutes, but if the experts think it can travel across the Channel for one visit, then so be it. But one visit it must be, not a travelling circus. The visit is an opportunity to learn about the events leading up to the battle and perhaps to stop acting as though this country sprang into being in 1066, when it does in fact have a long and fascinating history that connects us to the countries of northern Europe. Spare a thought, though, for the aged fabric and for the embroiderers who worked so hard to make GibsonBalsham, Cambridgeshire Have an opinion on anything you've read in the Guardian today? Please email us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our letters section.
Yomiuri Shimbun
17-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Yomiuri Shimbun
Bayeux Tapestry to Be Displayedin U.K. for First Time in Nearly 1,000 Years
LONDON (AP) — The Bayeux Tapestry, the 11th-century artwork depicting the Norman conquest of England, will be displayed in the U.K. for the first time in almost 1,000 years. Officials said on July 8 that the treasured medieval tapestry will be on loan from France and arrive next year at the British Museum, where it will star in a blockbuster exhibition from September 2026 to July 2027. The loan was announced during French President Emmanuel Macron's state visit to the U.K. The fragile 70-meter (230-foot) cloth depicts the events leading up to the conquest of England by William the Conqueror in 1066. The artwork was believed to have been commissioned by Bishop Odo of Bayeux and has been displayed in various locations across France, including most recently at the Bayeux Museum in Normandy.'The Bayeux Tapestry is one of the most iconic pieces of art ever produced in the U.K. and I am delighted that we will be able to welcome it here in 2026,' Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy said in a statement. 'This loan is a symbol of our shared history with our friends in France, a relationship built over centuries and one that continues to endure,' she added. In return, the British Museum will loan treasures from the Sutton Hoo collection — artifacts from a 7th century Anglo Saxon ship burial — to museums in Normandy. The excavation of Sutton Hoo was dramatized in the 2021 film 'The Dig' starring Ralph Fiennes and Carey Mulligan. Other items to be loaned to France include the Lewis Chessmen, the mysterious medieval chess pieces carved from walrus tusks and whales' teeth dating from around the 12th century that were discovered on the Isle of Lewis in Scotland.
The Guardian
16-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Never mind the Norman bollocks: Reading's replica Bayeux tapestry is a prudish triumph!
'We've already got one,' sneers a snotty French knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. With that holy grail of British history, the Bayeux tapestry, about to be lent by France to the British Museum, we could say the same. In 1885, Elizabeth Wardle of Leek, Staffordshire, led a team of 35 women in an extraordinary campaign to embroider a meticulous, full-scale replica of the entire early medieval artwork. With Victorian energy and industry they managed it in just a year and by 1886 it was being shown around Britain and abroad. Today that Victorian Bayeux tapestry is preserved in Reading Museum, and like the original, can be viewed online. Are there differences? Of course. The Bayeux tapestry is a time capsule of the 11th century and when you look at its stitching you get a raw sense of that remote past. The Leek Embroidery Society version is no mean feat but it is an artefact of its own, Victorian age. The colours are simplified and intensified, using worsted thread, as Wardle explains in its end credits, 'dyed in permanent colours' by her husband Thomas Wardle, a leading Midlands silk dyeing industrialist. The Wardles were friends with the radical craft evangelist William Morris – a clue that Elizabeth's epic work of replication should be seen as part of the Victorian passion for medieval history that encompassed everything from neo-gothic architecture to Walter Scott's novel Ivanhoe and Morris's Kelmscott Chaucer – in which the poems are illustrated with woodcuts. In this Victorian dream of the past, sympathies were very much on the Saxon side. The Norman conquest was seen as a national tragedy in which traditional Anglo-Saxon freedoms were crushed by the 'Norman Yoke'. It's ironic that this underdog version of British history, with brave Saxons defying the wicked conquering Normans, prevailed at a time when they were themselves conquering or colonialising much of the planet. That immigrant Victorian Karl Marx wrote that when people are 'revolutionising themselves and things … they anxiously conjure up the spirits of the past to their service, borrowing from them names, battle slogans, and costumes'. This perfectly describes 19th-century Britain, which hid its creation of modern industrial capitalism in medieval styles. And when it came to reproducing the Bayeux tapestry, it was a new technology that made it possible – photography. Wardle and her team based their embroideries on what was considered at the time a nationally essential photographic project. In the 1870s, the British government itself commissioned Joseph Cundall to photograph the entire Bayeux tapestry. You can picture his intrepid expedition setting out by the boat train with red-coated soldiers to guard the camera and a team of bearers. A Ripping Yarn. Cundall's monochrome photographs were hand-coloured by art students back in Britain – and censored. Like other medieval art, including manuscripts illuminated by monks, the Bayeux tapestry has a plenitude of monsters and obscenities in its marginalia, including male nudes with graphically depicted penises. One naked man stands with a flamboyant erection, which may be part of the tapestry's realism about the psychology of war. When the Leek Embroidery Society borrowed a set of Cundall's photographs, they of course copied the false colours and underpants from these supposedly objective recordings. Sign up to Art Weekly Your weekly art world round-up, sketching out all the biggest stories, scandals and exhibitions after newsletter promotion In fact, this is not the only full-size Victorian replica of the tapestry. Cundall created his own continuous photographic replica, mounted on two ornate wooden rollers so that you can scroll through it in your private library. Perhaps this is what its most recent private owner, the late Rolling Stones drummer Charlie Watts, used to do. When his estate went on sale his 'tapestry' got much less attention from the media than other treasures such as his first edition of The Great Gatsby. But it was sold for £16,000 – to the Bayeux Museum in Normandy. At least in Bayeux it's in safe hands, just as the original has been for at least 600 years.
