Latest news with #BayeuxTapestry
The Guardian
a day ago
- 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
3 days ago
- 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
3 days ago
- 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.
The Guardian
4 days ago
- 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.
The Guardian
6 days ago
- Politics
- The Guardian
Call for British Museum to take Bayeux tapestry to ‘1066 country'
The MP for Hastings and Rye has called on the British Museum to let the Bayeux tapestry spend time in '1066 country' when it comes to the UK, and to ensure the region reaps the benefits of the 'once-in-a-generation exhibition'. The tapestry will return to the UK for the first time in more than 900 years as part of a landmark loan agreement announced by the prime minister, Keir Starmer, and the French president, Emmanuel Macron. The 70-metre embroidered cloth, which depicts the 1066 Norman invasion and Battle of Hastings, will go on display at the British Museum from September next year. The Labour MP Helena Dollimore said it would be a 'great shame' if 1066 country – the area named after the battle – was locked out of 'this national moment'. 'Obviously, the practicalities and logistics would need to be looked at by experts, but our area is such an integral part of this tapestry that we must be included,' she said. In a letter to the British Museum chair, George Osborne, co-signed by the TV historian Dan Snow, Dollimore urged the museum to consult with French experts and curators to explore the viability of local English Heritage plans to take the tapestry to the south coast. She also called on the museum to ensure every local child had the opportunity to visit the exhibition by reserving free tickets and helping with the cost of transport to London; reserve at least 1,066 tickets to the exhibition for people from Hastings and the surrounding area, and support efforts to promote the region to exhibition visitors. Sign up to First Edition Our morning email breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what's happening and why it matters after newsletter promotion 'Few works of art are as central to our island's story as the Bayeux tapestry, which quite literally wove Hastings into the fabric of our national history,' the letter says. 'Although Hastings and the rest of 1066 Country has often been at the centre of historical events, it has not always felt the benefits of it. The Sutton Trust recently found that Hastings and Rye ranks among the bottom 10 areas in the country for social mobility. 63% of young people leave school without the basic qualifications in maths and English GCSE. Like many coastal communities, it has been left behind for too long. 'Why not return this iconic piece of our heritage to the very ground where it all began in 1066? Whilst we acknowledge that it is for experts to decide what is feasible, the Hastings area must play its rightful part in this national moment.' Dollimore said there was a huge opportunity to bring tourists to the region. 'We've got Hastings Castle, We've got Battle Abbey, we've got Pevensey Castle over in Eastbourne, the 1066 walk. Other parts of the country make a big thing of their history. There's loads of signage, there's exhibitions. So there really is more we can do now that the nation's attention is going to be turned to the tapestry.' Sarah Broadbent, the chair of the 1066 Country tourism organisation, said she was confident the loan would spark people's curiosity about the events depicted and the places where they happened. 'There are few dates as memorable, the Norman conquest was such a significant turning point in English history and we're very proud to call ourselves 1066 Country,' she said. 'We're not only rich in history but also in landscape, in heritage and in culture. We might be tucked away in the corner of the south-east but we pack a punch well above our weight in terms of the visitor experience … this is our chance to showcase everything we have to offer.'
