Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity

Aubusson Tapestry has been added in to the list in 2009.

https://ich.unesco.org/en/RL/aubusson-tapestry-00250


I think few other places, where tapestries are conservated should be on list, or the craft it self.

Tapestry: Hunts of Maximilian, December, The Killing of the Wild Boar, detail

Cartoon Origin of the cartoon is a scanned small part of the picture of the tapestry. It was scanned in 600 dpi. I printed it in the scale of 1/2 from original. It makes width of 90 cm and height of 104 cm.

Warp Cotton, Fishermans twine, 6 warps per cm. Totally 540 warps = 1100 meters of twine. In original work warping is horisontal. I am using vertical warping which will cause me some small problems.

Weft Wool 125 tex x2, Nm 8/2 (pirkkalanka) Color is not exactly even in weft, but it suites well in to this tapestry

Phases of work 1. Cartoon design and printing in Monikko. 2007 March 1.-2. Weaving has been done 2007 October 1. I cutted warps in the length of 15 cms, at 5 cm intervall, and tyed knots to secure weft in place. Then I removed the tapestry from loom cutting rest of the warps at length of 15 cm in both ends of the tapestry. Work is done and hanging on my wall. 2007 October 7.

Verdure with the Arms of Rakonczay Gergely

Cartoon

   

Origin of the cartoon is a sector of tapestry of Tallinn Town Council, woven 1547 in Enghien. 

Size 110x757 cm.

Woollen yarn, linen warp.

Amount of warps / cm has not been given. In verdures it has been normally 5 warps/cm, but linen warp  is also thicker than Fishermans twine.

 

I scanned part of the picture of the tapestry and changed Arms of Tallinn in to my own, and added a rabbit in the right corner.

Resolution of the picture is 600 dpi.

 

I printed it in height of 100 cm, which is 86% from original.

Tapestry does not have small details, so smaller scale should not make difficulties.

Warp Cotton, Fishermans twine, 32 warps per 5 cm. Totally 640 warps = 1400 meters of twine.  Fishermans twine is widely used today. On that moment I did not have linen thread, which is much better for Tapestry weaving. In original work warping is horisontal. I am using also horisontal warping which gives me a maximum height of 100 cm, where is also a 5 cm top hem included.

Weft Wool 125 tex x2, Nm 8/2 (pirkkalanka) I will use a little brighter colours than in the cartoon, since the colours has faded during the centuries.

Phases of work 1. Cartoon design and printing in Monikko. 2008 January

Work ready

Picture is taken before back linen was sewn place.

2008 September 16

Tapestry; Face of Mary

The idea of this tapestry is to test a metal threads and silk threads with wool in tapestry.

Cartoon

     

Origin of the cartoon is a sector of tapestry of The Virgin, Saint Anne and the Infant Christ, woven ca.1515 probably Brussels.

Size 105 x 105 cm.

Wool, silk, and gilt-metal-wrapped thread.

Warp        Cotton, Fishermans twine, 29 warps per 5 cm. Metal thread needs a little bigger space between warps than wool. In my last work I used 32 warps per 5 cm.

Weft        Wool 125 tex x2, Nm 8/2 (pirkkalanka) Wool 105 tex for face Silk-cotton 50%-50% 85 tex Nm 12/3 Metal thread, Kreinik Japan size 16

Phases of work Cartoon design and printing. 2008 October

2008 December 13.

Work done without knots in the upper end.

I lost 5 mm from the width in 25 cm. Width decreases from 29-28.5 mm.

I deside to make a cushion from the weaving.

I sew the work in to the linen canvas and filled the cushion.

It is small for the cushion, but it is very medieval method to use the weaving.

Tapestry, Arms of Cardinal Wolsey with Cardinals's hat

Origin of the cartoon is a Tapestry 7.9 in book: Henry VIII and the Art of Majesty:

Arms of Cardinal Wolsey with Cardinals hat, Archiepiscopal Cross, and Wolseys Motto.

Tapestry woven in the Southern Netherlands or England, ca. 1517-21. Wool and silk, 60x292 cm. Hampton Court Palace.

Mallikuva on skannattu kirjasta Henry VIII and the Art of Majesty: Kuvakudos 7.9.

Alkuperäinen työ on kudottu Etelä-Hollannissa tai Englannissa, noin 1517-1521. Työssä on käytetty villaa ja silkkiä.

Koko 60x292 cm. Työ sijaitsee Lontoossa Hampton Court Placessa.

Cartoon size 60x130 cm.

I scanned the picture from the book in 600 dpi and cut the Cross and Motto away.

Mallikuvan koko on 60x130cm, eli alkuperäisestä työstä on poistettu motto. Skannasin kuvan resoluutiolla 600dpi.

I printed the picture in scale 1:1

Warping Loimilangat Linen: Aivina 12/2 32 warps / 5 cm Horizontal

Weft Kudelangat Wool 125 tex x2, Nm 8/2 (pirkkalanka) Silk-cotton 50%-50% 85 tex Nm 12/3 I ordered 3 hues of  silk for the costumes of the angels, I already have two matching colors. Työssä käytin puuvillan ja silkin sekoitusta, viittä eri värisävyä enkelien asuihin. Metal thread, Kreinik Japan size 16 Cold metalthread will be used in proper places. Kullattua lankaa käytin muutamassa paikassa. Mouline special DMC 25 hue 842 Mouline kirjontalankaa käytin enkelien kasvoissa ja muutamassa vaakunan kohdassa. I will use a little brighter colours than in the cartoon, since the colours has faded during the centuries. I assume that the grass in the down of the picture has turned blue by aging. The same happened in the boar tapestry I wove earlier, but I did not change the color then. (Exposure to light also causes color changes; the green of foliage tends to come more blue as it ages and the more fugitive yellow component is lost. -Tapestry conservation, Principles and Practice, Frances Lennard page5) Work was done in 2009 from March to August.

WoW tapestry update

This Project has been in a "short" break, since I have ran out of few metal threads. They are quite expensive and difficult to get from USA. But now I have a source for them and this will be finished in next winter.

new Tapestry

So I decided to start a new tapestry.


I have been looking for a good cartoon to use in a tapestry, where I should use only metal weft. Finally I found one. I will weave a dragon of World of Warcraft. I have not been playing the game, but the dragon looks great.


I will use my small table loom and size of the tapestry will be about A3 sheet. Tapestries of purely metal weft has never been bigger than 1 m2.
Now I am waiting a delivery of Kreinik metal braid in size #12 Tapestry from US. I couldnot find the hues and size from anywhere else.

One of the good features of this project is: that it is easy to take this loom with me and teach how these works are done.

Warping is made with linen thread and 6 warps/cm as usual. It was normal in fine tapestries also. It was rare to go as far as 7 warps/cm.

Tapestry Map is done

Tapestry map is done after 20 months work.
Mostly I had wool weft.
Warps are linen.
Size 100x89 cm.

Lots of progress during the Christmas holidays

I believe this will be finished before the summer

An other update of the tapestry

Going fast now!

tapestry update

Its been too long time from my last blog update. Too much has been shown in FB.
I have tried to make more work with the tapestry lately. It is not so much to do out now, which helps.

Tapestry progress

Some people asked in Midwinter Feast, how much I have done the Tapestry now. Well here can you see.

New Year 2016 update

I have not made updates lately, but it does not been that I have not done anything.

First part of the Christmas holiday went sewing a Tudor Gown. Materials are wool, linen and real fur.

After that I continue weaving a tapestry.

Tapestry map progress

I have made about 1cm/ week so far, but I have had quite many other works to do also.

Cartoon is ready

I got the cartoon printed in to the paper on 30 euros in mainosbuumi. Now  I finally have a real feeling how the tapestry will look like.
The style of the map is very similar than the Sheldon tapestries. Biggest difference is that I will change the background colour, to show fields. In Sheldon tapestries there were no fields shown. That makes my cartoon to be a mixed image and map, if you think that maps of Sheldon tapestries were closer the image.

 

Example of the Sheldon tapestry is below. It is hard to understand difference, since Sheldon tapestries has very small changes in background. On my tapestry there are quite big areas of field, which wll be more yellow, separating them from the green forrest.

new tapestry

I have made preparations for the next tapestry. On that I will combine my two biggest hobbies, cartography and weaving. Work will be about 1 m2.

I use my old Ashford tapestry loom, that the work will be portable. All the warps are done. Just need to tighten them and make a proper knots.

 

I still have a lot of work with the cartoon. I copy individual trees and hills from sheldon tapestries I have photographed. Backround map is 19th century Russian map from Miehonlinna, Aarnimetsä.

Even now daddy's little helper wants to use the computer with me. It makes photoshop editing a little hard.

Short update

This is just a short note to tell that I am still alive.
After last post I have embroidered one more panache and should start to embroider silver quards next.

Quite a lot of time has been used to improve a documentation of last Tapestry. Most of it is done already. I read one more book from weaving and I will include some parts of that book in to sources of documentation. Book did not bring any changes for the text.

Plan is now that it will be shown in Summer Coronation.

Crown tourney A&S

I withdrewn tapestry away from the competition after judges suggested me to improve documentation of it. I had made a mistake by thinking that book, written in Finnish is a valid part of documentation. Now I will make a new better documentation and made a new entry from it later. I do not know yet, where it will happen.

Longbow won the competition, although it had not a perfect documentation either.

Three items in A&S competition tomorrow crown tourney

I will have three items in Royal Artesan competition this weekend:

1. Tapestry of Mars and Silvia size 250x150cm, project time nearly 4 years
2. Long bow made from yew. Project time 13 months
3. Map from finnish Gulf. Project time one month.

I am interested to get others opinion. Bow was already voted as a most beautiful two weeks ago in archers meeting beauty contest.

Book of "weaving a middle age tapestry" is finally done

Unfortunately book is available only in Finnish. I will put it here for everybody to download free. I have the copyright for the text, but since I do not see that I could ever get money back from printing this book, I think it is better to let people whom are interested, to have it free.