This Tuesday I went up to Warwick for the official celebration of the Reframing Sheldon Tapestry project that the Heritage and Culture Team have been running.
I’ve written previously about the project but it was such a big build that I lost myself in the process and forgot to tell you all about it.
So here’s a photo of 1.5m x 2.5m Machine Embroidered ‘Tapestry’ I have just finished making which is now part of the permanent collection at Market Hall Museum.
‘Reframing the Sheldon Tapestry’ is a tapestry with a 50cm border of embroidery work that surrounds a gilt picture frame. The gilt picture frame depicts some of the current features of the hand sewn border that frames the Sheldon tapestry. The bare hessian in the centre represents the missing map of Warwickshire. Constructed out of a fine hessian, which would have been a similar base material I used contemporary machine embroidery techniques, which can stitch up to 1,000 stitches a minute.
The artistic content of the tapestry is inspired by the ‘biggest cultural myths’ of the modern day – namely space travel and the deepest depths of the sea, which we are only just discovering. This can be seen very clearly in the planets and stars depicted at the top of the artwork and the giant squids, dragons and whales in the lower sections.
The theme of exploration is highlighted with the embroidered compass, which tells us where North is in relation to where the tapestry is hung in the Market Hall museum.
However, there is also inspiration from features that are closer to home. For example:
As you move down to the bottom right hand corner we hit a dense area of work that picks up on themes and ideas rediscovered when the Sheldon Tapestry was restored. Beoley Castle is on the tapestry itself and I was struck by how it’s architecture (and the depiction of the towns on the original tapestry) reminded me of contemporary city skylines. I wanted to include that sense of construction, layering, change and the contentiousness of that with a beautiful tower crane holding the skyline over a city where historic buildings and contemporary life collide together, with viaducts, and trains, roads and pathways, villages and houses all made safe with electric night lighting…
The producers created a lovely page about the project here and it’s been garnering a bit of local press in the Leamington Observer , The Edge Magazine