The Bayeux Tapestry

The Bayeux Tapestry which hangs in the city of Bayeux is a strip of linen cloth embroidered with woollen thread. It is, desite its title, not a tapestry. The masterpiece depicts the history of the conquest of England by the Normans in 1066 (Wilson Mc Kenzie, D, ’85). The piece embroidered in the 11^th century is 50 centimetres high and is 70.34 metres in length. The linen web was made in 8 sections. The first two are 113.5 metres long, and the next five range between 6.6 and 8.5 metres. The last piece is now only 5.25 metres lone; a length somewhere between 1 metre and 3 metres is missing at the end. The lost final section was on the outside when rolled up and was consequently the part most vulnerable to damage. However, it is because it was rolled up and stored away a lot of the time that it survived fires and wars for nearly 500 years in the 12^th century.

This exquisite embroidered piece is thought to have been created by over 100 noble women and is thought to have taken several years to complete (Somerkin, D, date unknown). Researchers are lead to believe that the tapestry was made in the South of England before 1082, though there is some debate to suggest that it was in fact created in Normandy ( Wilson Mc Kenzie, D, ’85). The end of the tapestry, which has been missing for nearly three centuries, means that we are unsure as to how the story of the Bayeux tapestry ends tapestry ends.                                      

                                       

The most remarkable thing about the tapestry is the way in which it presents the history of the conquest (Grape, W, ’94).

The embroidered cloth tells the story of Count William who came from Normandy into Pevensey. As soon as his men were able, they constructed a fortification at the market of Hastings. King Harold was told this and he collected a large army and went to seek William. However William came upon him unexpectedly before his army arrived and King Harold was killed.

What the Bayeux tapestry appears to present is a faithful and pictorial history of the conquest of England. In my opinion it is cartoon like or somewhat similar to a comic strip. It has aptly been called “the longest cartoon strip in the world” as it depicts the story of the conquest with simple and clear imagery which is accompanied by stitched text. The piece is completed with simple stitches and as a story it reads coherently, though this does not take away from the masterpiece that it is. The scale, its survival through the centuries and its capacity to tell an important story from history all contribute to the reasons why it is still appreciated, adorned and written about today.

The designer was evidently at pains to make history clearly legible. Without exception, commentators speak of “the designer”, a single artist who is always referred to as he. It can be suggested that through its homogenous style that perhaps a single artist lay out the whole of the pictorial narrative and that then this was stitched by a team of skilled embroiderer’s. The embroiderers’ rendered the designs illustrated by the artist such as the moustaches of the anglo-saxons, the spurs of the horse men, the forelocks of the galloping horses, the pointing index fingers and much else (Grape, W, ’94).

It certainly seems that it took a team to produce the Tapestry, working simultaneously. When work started in the spring of 1885 on a copy of the whole Tapestry, 35 women, members if the Leek Embroidery Society, shared the task until its completion in 1886, and that was with all the advantages of improved technology (Grape, W, ’94). The extent of the designs of the Tapestry, the use of multiple colours, and the scale of the piece itself suggests that there was a large and experienced workshop to produce this historical work.  

The woollen threads were dyed with plant dyes in a total of eight colours: a reddish yellow, an ochreous yellow, terracotta red, blue-green, sage green, a striking olive green, blue and bluish black. Some tones that were technically possible at the time are missing from the replica completed by the Leek Embroidery Society; these include a medium yellow (from crab-apple bark), a powerful red (from the madder root), intense green (as a mixture of blue and yellow), grey (using a thinned iron-gall solution), chocolate brown (a mixture of ochre, red and black) and violet (from elderberries) (Mc Kenzie Wilson, D, ’85).

So little textile art created in the middle ages have survived and therefore it is difficult to establish where and where not the embroidery techniques applied in the Bayeux tapestry were used.