Tapestries

Tapestries play a huge role in the recording of events during medievil times. Before the times of technology, creativity came into contact with many more daily activities, especially tapestries. They have a lot of thought that goes into each one, a process of artist, designer, maker, produced to a high quality.

The actual making process of a tapestry is long and careful. they're generally longer than they are tall, like a scroll. tapestries are made from warp and weft threads, the warp is the body of the work, the strength, and the weft holds the decorative element. Iy yt's been known that gold and silver have been used as weft threads, but generally it's wool or silk. Some even took upto 4 months to finish.

Tapestries tend to tell a story through a journey either literally or metaphorically. Generally tapestries have both these elements, especially use of alagri. An allegry is a meaning much more intense than a metaphor, it can usually be summed up in one word, such as; hope, fear, loss, etc. It wouldn't be portrayed as simply as one word though, it's likley there would be a series of images, figures and colours arranged in a way that tells this. They often have religious or biblical influence or symbolism.

There are 'common' symbols and figures used throughout the popular times of tapestry art, such as; unicorns, armies, difference in sex. A lot of them are set in landscapes, verdor and wars, infact their often commisioned for a war, by the rich. Although many were created because of the war, unfortunatley a lot were destroyed for the same reason. The french war was responsible for ruining many of the greatest tapestries.

Some tapestries became more well known than others, usually due to a public ocurance that led to the them in the first place. 'The Lady in the Unicorn', 'The Hunt of the Unicorn' and the 'Bayeux Tapestry' are all prime examples of this. One that's particually recognisable to me is 'Guernica'. It was originally painted by Picasso, 1937, on reflection of the bombing's of Guernica only a few months prior.

There is very little difference in the painting and tapestry. The tapestry still holds the strong atmosphere of death and distruction that the original did. Unlike a lot of tapestries 'Guernica' held dark, dull and morbid colours. A lot was more black and white, a lot like the bombing, things became clear, black and white. The tapestry does still hold original figures, such as horses and people.

After exploring the meaning and history of tapestries and the allegry's within them, a group of us decided to look at a modern day algari- either involving an aspect of our own personal life, or a recent event effecting life today. We used the recent American election as our inspiration. Barack Obama won the election, and we wanted to show how that changed and effected politics from now on. We focused on 'Equality'.