I saw the Bayeux tapestry in Bayeux in 1997. For 7 francs I got a 20 minute film that played alternately in English and French, as much time as I wanted to study a canvas replica, and a quickly moving line past the real thing behind plexiglass, wearing headphones that explained it that were coded for language with colored dots. Great experience. I was on a 6 week solo bike ride, and just before Bayeux I had been at the D-Day beaches 6 miles away ... another war almost 900 years later. And a few days earlier I had been on the mud flats at Mont St. Michel, the same ones that the tapestry (more of an embroidery) showed Harold rescuing a couple of soldiers from.
I saw this. It was done by Victorian embroiderers, and was amazing, but the part I remember is one of the incidental characters. In the original, he was quite conspicuously nude; in the reproduction he was given a pair of shorts.
Victorian embroiderers in 1088 when Odo, the Archbishop of Bayeux and half brother of William the Bastard/Conqueror, commissioned it to have it hung in the cathedral?
The tale was that it had been created by Queen Mathilde and her ladies in waiting, which of course was not true ... it was made by professional embroiderers, but long before the reign of Queen Victoria.
When Odo fell out of favor with William, the tapestry was folded and stored in a cedar box, opened each year for inventory. This is why it is so well preserved ... as opposed, for instance, to the massive Apocalypse Tapestry in Anjou that was used to protect orange orchards from frost.
> in the reproduction
The original is visible behind plexiglass in Bayeux. There is also a canvas reproduction -- I saw it in 1997 and don't recall whether it was bowdlerized.
P.S. Ah, I missed that it has been temporarily relocated from Bayeux to the British Museum. It will return to Bayeux within a year.
Because it's a gorgeous piece of history. I have a paper reproduction that is 30m long. Yes, 30meters or I guess like 100 feet? From Citadelles et Mazenot edition, gorgeous books.
That fanfic ending of the Bayeux Tapestry in Reading is an obvious Victorian fabrication. The original depicts the c-base space station crashing on earth. It can be viewed in Berlin:
The tale was that it had been created by Queen Mathilde and her ladies in waiting, which of course was not true ... it was made by professional embroiderers, but long before the reign of Queen Victoria.
When Odo fell out of favor with William, the tapestry was folded and stored in a cedar box, opened each year for inventory. This is why it is so well preserved ... as opposed, for instance, to the massive Apocalypse Tapestry in Anjou that was used to protect orange orchards from frost.
> in the reproduction
The original is visible behind plexiglass in Bayeux. There is also a canvas reproduction -- I saw it in 1997 and don't recall whether it was bowdlerized.
P.S. Ah, I missed that it has been temporarily relocated from Bayeux to the British Museum. It will return to Bayeux within a year.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=KnieUa2-22o
it was a tremendously technical and expensive feat.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/bergie/46619220061/