I am really looking forward to the Bayeux Tapestry (really “Bayeux Embroidery”) coming to the British Museum next year. I have seen it only once, at home in Bayeux, and it was one of those famous objects that was even more impressive than I expected it to be. So, it will be great to be able to take more, and closer, looks at it. And I am already planning a few gigs on the Latin of the Tapestry (which is reassuringly easy to translate).
The prospect of its visit got me digging around to discover more about the Tapestry’s recent history. The first surprise was that a piece of it had actually been nicked by a Brit in the early nineteenth century. Charles Stothard had been in Bayeux doing a complete drawing of the thing for the Society of Antiquaries, and while he was there he snipped off two small pieces of it: one is lost, the other ended up in the Victoria and Albert Museum. (The full, complicated story is here.) This piece came into its own some years later, in the 1870s, when the V&A were having trouble persuading the authorities in Bayeux to allow them to photograph the complete Tapestry. Henry Cole, the Director, offered to return the stolen fragment and permission to photograph was quickly forthcoming. It was one of the biggest photography projects ever undertaken at the time – black and white, then hand-coloured.
But that was only the beginning of the copying process. Several copies of the photographs were made. One of these ended up in the collection of Rolling Stones drummer Charlie Watts and was bought after his death by the Bayeux Museum. Another was used as the basis for the most brilliant, full-scale copy in the UK, made in the 1880s by a group of Victorian lady embroiderers, co-ordinated by the Leek Embroidery Society in Staffordshire. It’s their work at the head of this post. (It has often been said that, on their own initiative, these ladies gave some naked men in the Tapestry modest little panties – in fact, the painting on the photographs had already covered up the naughty bits.) This modern version got its own fame. It travelled to Europe and to the US, before ending up in Reading, where you can still see it. I am told that it has appeared in numerous BBC programmes, clearly marked onscreen as a replica, but a lot cheaper than taking a crew to Bayeux. (The photo at the head of this post shows one panel in Reading.)
And there are many, many more. You might have spotted a wonderful embroiderer from Wisbech who is currently working on another full-scale replica. And that’s before you get to all the other tributes, like David Hockney’s riff on the Tapestry.
I have spent almost all my life looking at old things, and the Tapestry’s story is a classic example of how complicated their stories often are. And I have spent at least half my life being fascinated by copies of old things. I have worked on plaster casts, on Roman “copies” of ancient Greek sculpture, and so on. But, even in an age of apparently perfect digital replicas, the excitement of the Tapestry’s visit to Britain shows that the real thing still has the capacity to excite far beyond even the careful replica stitching of the ladies of Leek’s. We want museums full of real things.
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