The Great Tapestry of Scotland By Alistair Moffat Birlinn Limited, Publisher 2013, Hardback, Details/Photos of 165 panels Category: Art, History, Cover price 30 pounds ISBN 978-1-78027-160-6 The other (soft cover) version of the same title, by Susan Mansfield and Alistair Moffat, has a sub-title: "The Making of a Masterpiece", and has a different text and photos. It was the first volume published. It tells the hands-on story of the organizing and of the individual people who actually worked on the tapestry, with wonderful anecdotes of their stitching adventures. Panel photos are 2 inches square, compared to each being given a full page in the larger hardback book. I bought the soft cover first, loved it, but wanted to read the history and see more details and the complete work! Some may want the soft cover, ISBN 978-1-78027-133-0 with a cover price of 10 pounds. These books are being reviewed for lace makers because the tapestry is an impressive historic document that was made in more than 50,000 hours by a thousand or more Volunteers aged 4 to 94. We need Lace Volunteers - and this shows wonderful results from skilled and unskilled people who pulled together and completed something extraordinary within a tight time frame of less than two years. Between the two books, we have a very good account of how to conceive of, plan, organize, coordinate, finance, and complete a large group project. It is a heartwarming true story. So much more inspiring than any fiction could hope to be. Many would love The Great Tapestry of Scotland for the sheer pleasure and pride it has brought to a small nation. If you have a Scottish heritage, the hardback version is good reading for your children. Design elements could inspire lace: Trees and plants, spider webs, animals great and small (including Dolly the cloned sheep), etc. Hidden in many panels are humorous tiny additions, like Peter Pan flying above the image of J. M. Barrie. This is an effort that was inspired by the Bayeux Tapestry of about 950 years ago, and other large scale embroideries made in the 20th Century. All tell a historic story. These have generally been worked as crewel wool embroidered wall hangings, not true tapestry: Two of my favorites are The Overlord Embroidery depicting the Normandy Landings of 1944 and The Quaker Tapestry illustrating the history of a religion. There are others. To date, the 165 panels illustrating 12,000 years of Scottish history makes this the longest crewel embroidery of its kind, at over 140 metres. (More panels may be added as history moves forward.) It starts with a panel showing the rising of land above the seas hundreds of millions of years ago and ends with an image of the sea that surrounds most of Scotland. The biggest challenge was determining which historic events to honor once the land was finally populated by humans. The next biggest was to include women in as many panels as possible, despite the fact that so little was written about them in the years before 1800. Lace is depicted in crewel embroidery first in Panel 44 of Mary, Queen of Scots in the mid-16th C., and last in Panel 91 of Queen Victoria at Balmoral 1850s/60s. There are lace depictions, worn by men, between the dates of these two panels. You might like to know there are panels devoted to other textiles: # 23 David I and the Wool Trade C. 1130 # 59 Modern Kilt Invented at Lochaber 1723 # 73 Home Weaving, Reeling and Spinning # 78 Robert Owen and New Lanark 1785 # 86 Borders Tweed #105 Paisley Pattern #107 Mill Working (women at Paisley, etc.) #115 Shetland, Isbister Sisters (shown knitting) #126 Fair Isle (girl knitting) 2014 dates of exhibitions: Aberdeen Art Gallery & Museum - Now to 19 April, Anchor Mill in Paisley 3 May to 8 June, Scottish Parliament 1 July to 13 September, New Lanark 20 October to 22 November. Double check dates and hours before traveling - some museums are closed on Mondays, etc. Please do some computer searches, to see pictures. So far this year, 55 new books have been added to my book inventory. This set of 2 books are - by far - my favorites. Jeri Ames in Maine USA Lace and Embroidery Resource Center
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