Who made the Bayeux Tapestry, why, when and where are questions that have solicited many conflicting answers. Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, is the favourite candidate for the role of patron, although others have been proposed, including William the Conqueror himself and, traditionally, his wife Queen Matilda. Read more: Bayeux Tapestry is going home after years — medieval history professor.
The tapestry has been interpreted as both pro-Norman and pro-English propaganda. It has been argued that it was meant for a church setting, a great hall in a castle or for a travelling venue. The designer would have had to have measured the cathedral very carefully, and kept these dimensions in mind when choosing and organizing the depicted scenes. Counter-arguments have already appeared.
In his recent letter to the Times , David Bates, history professor emeritus from the University of East Anglia, pointed out the close connections between the tapestry, Bishop Odo and St.
Bates concludes that the tapestry must be a product of Anglo-French co-operation. This would be an extraordinary event. There have been several earlier failed attempts by England to borrow it, with requests made in , , and The requests were rejected either by the city of Bayeux or by the French government, with the fragility of the fabric cited as the main reason.
The anticipated English exhibition motivated Norton to investigate how the tapestry was originally intended to be displayed. To make his case that the tapestry was designed for Bayeux cathedral, Norton reviewed published archaeological evidence to determine exact measurements of the central nave public gathering area of the 11th-century church. The original nave is now encapsulated within the piers and walls of the later Gothic structure.
This level of organisation would need to have taken place in a professional workshop-like setting. Anglo-Saxon charters give examples of possible workshops — for instance, one dating to the ninth century records Bishop Denewulf of Worcester giving an embroiderer named Eanswitha an estate as payment for looking after and making textiles for the church.
This estate most likely housed some form of workshop, much as other central estates are known to have done for textile production. My research, too, has highlighted archaeological evidence for possible embroidery workrooms. Such places would need to have been clean so that dirt could not contaminate the embroidery, and they would also have needed access to good light.
Larger and more elaborate pieces of the tapestry would have been attached to a slate frame a large rectangular frame made of four pieces of wood that slot together , so generous space would have been required.
Space would also have been needed to store materials even if the materials were not being bought in bulk , and for workers to move around and work comfortably. It may be that in good weather, embroidery was undertaken outside under a canopy, much like the illustrations of women weaving depicted in the Utrecht Psalter.
There is no direct evidence for who commissioned the tapestry. However, Elizabeth Carson Paston, Stephen White and Kate Gilbert explored this theory in and concluded there is no real evidence to support it. The answer to this question changes when we consider where the Tapestry was meant to be displayed. If we take recent arguments put forward by Gale Owen-Crocker and Chris Henige, the Tapestry would have been hung in a room in a castle keep, which Henige suggests is Dover Castle.
Therefore a cross-section of people would have viewed the Bayeux Tapestry. There is no concrete evidence for when the Tapestry was made, nor how it ended up in France. Currently the agreed date for its creation is sometime before the end of the 11th century.
Scholars agree that the first positive record of the tapestry in France is the Bayeux Cathedral inventory of At present we do not know what happened to it between these dates. Professor George Beech has argued that the tapestry could have been made in France, but most scholars believe it was made in Anglo-Saxon England, with the most likely centre being in or around Canterbury. It is difficult to say how long it took to make and there has been no specific research on this.
The answer would depend on how many women were working on the embroidery simultaneously; the size of the building s in which it was being made; access to light and access to materials. Any estimation of the time taken to make the tapestry would need to take into account the time taken to manufacture the required materials; plus the time involved in the production of the design itself; plus other logistics.
The base textile ground fabric of the Bayeux Tapestry is linen. It was stitched with wool threads dyed with natural dyes. A small number of linen threads were also sporadically used. Over the intervening centuries a number of linen textile patches were added to the back of the tapestry to cover tears and holes.
During the 19th century, areas of the missing embroidery were re-stitched with wool thread dyed with chemicals — on the front of the hanging these appear more garish than the original threads.
On the reverse, the level of stitch-work is not as neat or precise as the original. Running along the top of the tapestry is a strip of linen fabric. The French conservators who studied the tapestry during its conservation thought the strip was old, but they were not sure how old. An early backing was lost during restoration work on the tapestry in the 19th century, therefore a new lining was attached.
Correct, the Bayeux Tapestry is actually embroidery. A tapestry is a woven textile where the design is woven into the fabric as the textile is being created on the loom. Embroidery, on the other hand, is stitched onto a piece of textile that is already woven. Read Next. Submit a letter: Email us letters nybooks. In response to: Women Artists Win! This Issue July 17, Avi Shlaim.
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