Bayeux Tapestry thread colours
Su/Cutworks
the Bayeux Tapestry, giving modern embroidery thread equivalents.
Can anyone point me to a site or discussion where I could find them?
Thanks
-Su
Cynthia Virtue
conjectural "finish" to the tapestry, and a book; it's rather
interesting. A websearch (AskJeeves) didn't turn up any site
specifically about the colors, either in French or English. You could
get a DMC (or other) colorwheel and sit down with a good reproduction
from the library....
--
Cynthia du Pré Argent
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Ygraineogf
>Well, there's http://www.madeira.co.uk/bayeux_index.html which has a
>conjectural "finish" to the tapestry, and a book; it's rather
>interesting. A websearch (AskJeeves) didn't turn up any site
>specifically about the colors, either in French or English. You could
>get a DMC (or other) colorwheel and sit down with a good reproduction
>from the library....
>--
>Cynthia du Pré Argent
>
I have a copy of this book. I haven't read through it yet, but I got it at
Angel's Anniversary in Caid. The merchant was Mistress Xena Baxter Winthrope of
"Hedgehog Handworks". From the little bit of reading I've done there is a
section on the materials used and what plants were used for dying during that
time period.
I can't wait for the time I would need to really read this book.
Ygraine
Calafia, Caid
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Nicole Benkert
many others) put together a whole bunch of good research on the tapestry as
we recreated 3 yards of it for a Chivalry scroll. I've forwarded your
message to her as i can't currently find the Medici wool numbers...
Mary K Placeway
Excerpts from netnews.rec.org.sca: 16-Oct-100 Re: Bayeux Tapestry thread
.. by Nicole Benkert@verizon.n
> About 2 years ago for Pennsic Aerin Teine (of AEthelmearc) (with help from
> many others) put together a whole bunch of good research on the tapestry as
> we recreated 3 yards of it for a Chivalry scroll. I've forwarded your
> Su/Cutworks wrote:
> > Years ago I recall that someone posted information on the colours used in
> > the Bayeux Tapestry, giving modern embroidery thread equivalents.
I was part of the Debatable Lands team (about 24 total people involved,
12 embroiderers), headed by Lady Aerin Teine. We spend 10 months
embroidering a 9ft Bayeaux Tapestry style knighthood scroll for Sir
Christopher Rawlins, which was presented at AEthelmearc Court at Pennsic
28. Here's where we ordered the embroidery wool, and the colors which
most closely matched the original (as observed by a friend in England,
who had studied the tapestry and sent us wool samples from a kit sold by
the museum in Bayeaux, from which we matched our colors):
Nordic Needle
1-800-433-4321
http://www.nordicneedle.com
(I couldn't figure out how to order on-line, though, so I just called them.)
We used DMC "Medici" Wool, which comes in small skeins costing about 85
cents each. The order number is #DMMED, then the color number (the
names listed are the DMC Medici wool color names):
Gold: 8313
Rust: 8104
Sage Green: 8426
Drk. Blue: NAVY
Med. Blue: 8201
Drk. Green: 8407
I just ordered some wool from them last week - they deliver very promptly.
If you wanted to get a vague idea of what these colors looked like by
looking at regular DMC cotton embroidery thread, here is a list of color
numbers. The colors do look somewhat different in wool than in cotton,
but this will give you an idea. I'm using the same Medici wool color
names as above, to avoid confusion.
Gold: DMC 3820 or 783 is close. A goldenrod color.
Rust: DMC 918 or 221 is close. A russet color. It matched a natural
dye sample I had of wool dyed with Brazilwood using an alum mordant.
Sage Green: DMC 368 or 522 is close. A light, pale green. Similar to
wool samples I have dyed with weld (can't remember the mordant).
Drk. Blue: DMC 336. A navy blue.
Med. Blue: DMC 3808, is just a tad too light. This is really more of a
turquoise or a dark teal blue-green color. It matched a natural dye
sample I had of wool dyed with woad using a copper mordant.
Drk. Green: DMC 501 (In perle cotton, viewed directly, 500 is closer;
520 is not quite blue enough.) This is really more of a medium green.
If you want more information, let me know! Please contact me at my home
email address: g3d...@bellatlantic.net
--Genevieve du Vent Argent, Baroness
Barony-Marche of the Debatable Lands
Kingdom of AEthelmearc
g3d...@bellatlantic.net
Cynthia Virtue
> who had studied the tapestry and sent us wool samples from a kit sold by
> the museum in Bayeaux, from which we matched our colors):
That's really keen! Do you recall if the tapestry had much fading over
time, or was it more protected since it was in a church? (A lot of the
more secular tapestries, like the Unicorn ones, have serious fading due
to being in the sun, wrapped around old furniture in storage in the
1800s, etc.)
--
Cynthia du Pré Argent
"Such virtue hath my pen...." -Shakespeare, Sonnet LXXXI
"I knew this wasn't _my_ pen!" --Cynthia V.
Mary K Placeway
Here's some more info on the Bayeaux Tapestry, which I inadvertantly
left out of my last message.
BOOKS:
"The Bayeux Tapestry", by David Mackenzie Wilson & Alfred A. Knopf,
copyright 1985, ISBN#: 0-394-54793-4 (A large "coffee-table" style book,
colors are a bit faded, but has some good info about the colors and the
size of the reproduction is large, so you can get a good look at the
images.)
"The Bayeaux Tapestry: Monument to a Norman Triumph", by Wolfgang Grape,
copyright 2000, ISBN#: 3791313657, paperback, about $40. (Better
colors, better text, though images are smaller. Gave more info about
the thread count of the linen [54 threads per inch] and told us that the
images were drawn in red. If you look it up on Amazon.com, there are a
few images that are displayed from the book.)
There's another book called "The Mystery of the Bayeaux Tapestry" that
I've mislaid - it had a great illustration of the "laid & couched"
stitches which is similar to the one shown on the Regia Anglorum site
listed below, and shows pictures of the back of the tapestry, showing
where threads are missing and showing the knots in the thread.
WEBSITES:
Regia Anglorum: http://www.regia.org/
Embroidery Techniques: http://www.regia.org/embroid.htm
This site has a very good illustration of the "laid & couched work"
stitches used in the Bayeaux Tapestry. Doesn't list their sources, though.
The Battle of Hastings: http://battle1066.com/intro.html
Bayeaux Tapestry: http://battle1066.com/bayeux1.htm
also: http://www.hastings1066.com/
and: http://www.hastings1066.com/history.shtml
This site is no longer active:
http://orb.rhodes.edu/schriber/bayeux_tapestry.html
but contains this note:
"If you wish to obtain images from the museum, you can contact them at:
Centre Guillaume-le-Conquerant
Rue de Nesmond
Bayeux, France"
The museum sells a small-scale reproduction book, folded size approx. 1
foot by 4"inches high, which expands out to show the whole tapestry (the
original tapestry is 220' long).
I hope this helps!
--Genevieve du Vent Argent, Baroness Debatable Lands, AEthelmearc
Cynthia Virtue
> The museum sells a small-scale reproduction book, folded size approx. 1
> foot by 4"inches high, which expands out to show the whole tapestry (the
> original tapestry is 220' long).
You can get it from online booksellers -- I wish I had a room that was
just the right size to wallpaper the strip along the top of the
wainscoting, where it could be enjoyed!
> --Genevieve du Vent Argent, Baroness Debatable Lands, AEthelmearc
Hey, we must be related! ;)
Mary K Placeway
> time, or was it more protected since it was in a church?
I don't recall reading anything about the tapestry either having faded
or being protected, but our friend in England said that the colors
looked very bright to her. She said that the wool samples which she
sent us (leftovers from the kit sold at the museum in Bayeaux, where she
also took classes on how to do the stitches) very closely matched the
colors in the tapestry. The colors of these samples looked very strong
to me (except for the very pale green) and seemed to match the colors
reproduced in the Wolfgang Grape book. These colors also seemed to
match some of the natural dye samples I had made some years before, so
we felt that this was a reasonable guess.
We were definitely going on faith here, relying on the kindness of
others, since none of the people working on the project here had ever
been to Bayeaux to look at the tapestry "in person" (and none of us had
the time or money to fly out there to do the research ourselves). This
isn't necessarily the best method, though...
We felt a bit better about our "leap of faith" when the scroll was
presented at Pennsic 28, and a few of the people who were looking at it
remarked that they had been to Bayeaux, seen the original tapestry, and
the colors we chose looked "just like that".
Someday I'll get to Bayeaux, with my little wool samples, and color
match it for myself. :-)
--Genevieve...
Su/Cutworks
here.
-Su
Cynthia Virtue
> She said that the wool samples which she
I don't doubt it. However, I've seen the original (and decent repros),
and it seems less colorful than I would expect from a high-end work.
One would have to see the backside of the thing to know if it's faded.
The Unicorn Tapestries look vibrant, until you compare them with their
backs, as I mentioned.
EXCMairi
chart? I also remember seeing something about it here some time ago.
Mairi
Derek Lyons
>
>> who had studied the tapestry and sent us wool samples from a kit sold by
>> the museum in Bayeaux, from which we matched our colors):
>
>That's really keen! Do you recall if the tapestry had much fading over
>time, or was it more protected since it was in a church? (A lot of the
>more secular tapestries, like the Unicorn ones, have serious fading due
>to being in the sun, wrapped around old furniture in storage in the
>1800s, etc.)
The Tapestry, like much else, was not really protected until modern
times.
D.
------------------------------
Proprietor, Interim Books http://www.interimbooks.com
USS Henry L. Stimson homepage http://www.interimbooks.com/655/
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------------------------------
Curt Halbrook
<39eed02b...@news.seanet.com>:
It was "refound" during the Napoleonic (I believe) wars covering a wagonload
of ammunition.
Curt Halbrook
margali
[IIRC] of a 1:1 linen and supplied woolen thread printed bayeux tapestry
kit. You got a bolt of the linen preprinted with the tapestry and a case
of assorted woolens. $50 american at the time. I wish that I had been
interested in embroidery at teh time. I kick myself now for not at least
getting it to give to my mom or somebody else.
margali
Nicole Benkert
> time, or was it more protected since it was in a church? (A lot of the
> more secular tapestries, like the Unicorn ones, have serious fading due
> to being in the sun, wrapped around old furniture in storage in the
> 1800s, etc.)
Hi-
I've included what i found on fading via a cursory reading of my sources
(included. Sorry for the poor format of my bibliography- it's been a long
time since i had to do one)
-Ceinwen ferch Llewelyn ab Owain
===========================
Fading and the Bayeux Tapestry
---------------------------------
Cetto, Anna Maria The Bayeux Tapestry. 1970 (trans. Britta M. Charleston)
Hallwag Ltd.
Wilson, David M. The Bayeux Tapestry. 1985 Alfred A Knopf. ISBN
0-394-54793-4
“Most of the wool seems to have been dyed with vegetable dyes already in the
fleece. Hence the incredible absence of fading that it exhibits. Only in
part was the woolen yarn presumably re-dyed after it had been spun. Strange
to say, moreover, the clothes-moths have avoided the old wool, in contrast to
the materials with which the repairs were later carried out, which were
obviously more to their liking. As the embroidery-wool for such an extensive
piece of needle-work was not all dyed at the same time, that is to say, the
materials of one shade were not all dipped together in one vat, there is a
wide variety of shades within each of the eight tones, in spite of the fact
that the same plants were used for the dye, age and light having also done
their share though far less than might have been expected after 900 years.”
(Cetto, p. 3)
[somebody would have benefitted from a better editor!!!]
“The conservators of 1983 were struck by the fact that the colours on the back
of the tapestry were of almost the same tone as those on the front; there had
been little or no fading. It should, however, be pointed out to the modern
visitor to Bayeux that some of the brilliance of the colours is lost by the
need to keep light-levels low and by the necessary presence of security glass
in front of the hanging. Because of the thickness of the wool and the manner
of stitching, the surface is a mass of light and shade which gives a lively
feeling to the embroidery and sometimes makes it difficult to be precise in a
description of the colour of a particular feature.” (Wilson p.11)
Other things mentioned that might bear significance:
*The tapestry shows signs of having been washed at least once (maybe twice)
[this also helps explain the lack of lines from cartoons or drawings]
*displayed on the feast of relics [July 1] (from the inventory of Bayeux
Cathedral, 1476)
Stefan li Rous
I remember the discussion. Much of the discussion, and I think, the
chart of modern embroidery thread equivalents can be found in this
file in the TEXTILE ARTS section of my Florilegium files:
Bayeux-Tap-msg (30K) 10/30/98 The Bayeux Tapestry. Book reviews.
In article <971691024.20695.0...@news.demon.co.uk>,
"Su/Cutworks" <xst...@cutworks.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> Years ago I recall that someone posted information on the colours used in
> the Bayeux Tapestry, giving modern embroidery thread equivalents.
>
> Can anyone point me to a site or discussion where I could find them?
>
> Thanks
>
> -Su
--
Lord Stefan li Rous Mark S. Harris
Barony of Bryn Gwlad Austin, TX
Ansteorra ste...@texas.net
*** Check out Stefan's Florilegium files at:
http://www.florilegium.org ***
Su/Cutworks
-Su