Images From the Bayeux Tapestry

Illustration: Scene from the Bayeux tapestry, 11th century.

The Bayeux tapestry is of course not technically a tapestry but in fact an embroidery. However, often large embroidered hangings have been termed embroidered tapestries and the word tapestry itself, in this case at least, seems to apply to the size of the embroidery rather than its similarity to a tapestry.

Most now see the Bayeux tapestry as being English made, although there is still some continuing debate as to a French origin. However, its more obvious use was as a Norman propaganda piece where the story of the Norman invasion and occupation of England was twisted to suit the victor, as is always the case.

Illustration: Two scenes from the Bayeux tapestry, 11th century.

The tapestry was set out as a long narrative. In some respects, it could be seen as a song or ballad of the story of William and Harold. It was of course meant to reflect both treachery and betrayal, two vital ingredients to any good ballad. William was of course seen as being the injured party with Harold being portrayed as the betrayer. However, from an English standpoint it was seen as a fateful tragedy with William always being seen within the context of a brutal and aggressive opportunist with Harold playing the role of fateful victim.

The Norman invasion has been seen in many guises, ranging from that of the first chapter of the long tradition of aristocracy and institutions that leads up to and includes much that is modern day Britain, to one of unmitigated disaster for England and the common man as well as the painful history of Wales and Ireland from the initial Norman invasions, and the later cycle of wars between England and France. It is perhaps wise in some respects that the Bayeux tapestry remains in Normandy along with most of the Norman kings who ruled England from 1066.

Illustration: Two scenes from the Bayeux tapestry, 11th century.

As to the practical tapestry itself, it was produced with wool on a bleached linen background. The dimensions of the surviving tapestry, it has a missing end, is over 70 metres long with a height of about 50 centimetres. The wool was dyed into eight distinct colours ranging from red, yellow, buff, three types of green and two blues. Because of the phenomenal length of the tapestry, it is actually made up of eight strips of linen of various lengths, which were produced by a number of women, possibly simultaneously.

Interestingly, the start of the tapestry shows the coronation of the English king Edward the Confessor at Westminster Abbey. It is thought that the missing end of the tapestry shows the coronation of the Norman king William the Conqueror also at Westminster Abbey. Although this can never be verified it would seem plausible that if the tapestry were displayed around the walls of a large enough room, the two ends would be near enough to each other to create a symbolic link between Edward and William the one being the others natural successor. This would have given William a form of legitimacy through embroidery, one that would have been both obvious and public. This would also have placed Harold II's coronation the last English Saxon king as lost part way through the tapestry theme and therefore of less significance.

Illustration: Two scenes from the Bayeux tapestry, 11th century.

If the missing end of the tapestry truly did show the coronation of William the Conqueror it is intriguing to hypothesise as to whether William's final revenge disintegrated through time or whether it was purposely removed by an incensed Englishman, we will probably never know. However, it is interesting to think that William's legitimacy through his crowning at Westminster Abbey has been removed whether purposely or through accident from the Bayeux tapestry. Although the Saxon England of the pre-Norman era was by no means a perfect society, the Bayeux could be seen as a painful reminder of an England that had to endure centuries of rule by an elite that were by no means known for their light hand.

Despite this, the tapestry is an important and substantial piece of textile craft surviving from the 11th century. Although embroidery examples from this period and before do survive in Northern Europe, they are perhaps not as voluminous as a 70 metre length showing a pivotal moment in both English and ultimately French history.

Illustration: Two scenes from the Bayeux tapestry, 11th century.

Further reading links:
The Bayeux Tapestry Embroiderers' Story
The Bayeux Tapestry
1066: The Hidden History in the Bayeux Tapestry
The Bayeux Tapestry: The Life Story of a Masterpiece
The Bayeux Tapestry
A Needle in the Right Hand of God: The Norman Conquest of 1066 and the Making and Meaning of the Bayeux Tapestry
The Bayeux Tapestry: Monument to a Norman Triumph (Art & Design S.)
The Bayeux Tapestry: The Complete Tapestry in Colour
The Bayeux Tapestry: New Interpretations
The Rhetoric of Power in the Bayeux Tapestry (Cambridge Studies in New Art History and Criticism)
The Bayeux Tapestry and the Norman Invasion
The Bayeux Tapestry: The Story of the Norman Conquest: 1066
Anglo-Saxon Propaganda in the Bayeux Tapestry (Studies in French Civilization)
The Study of the Bayeux Tapestry

Marchenbilder Tapestry by Franz Hein

Illustration: Franz Hein. Marchenbilder tapestry design, c1898.

Franz Hein is perhaps better known for his fine art work produced during a career that spanned the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries. Although he did produce some tapestry work, most of his output does seem to be in the mould of fine art painting. This particular tapestry design entitled Marchenbilder was produced in about 1898, right at the very end of the nineteenth century, but also at the beginning of the Art Nouveau period. 

Marchenbilder can be loosely translated into English as Fairy Pictures, which is perhaps appropriate for an artist that had a reputation for delivering work that was very much themed on the fairy tales and myths of his native Germany. It was the use of mythical and half legendary compositional themes that perhaps gives the impression that Hein was, if not a member of the Arts & Crafts movement then at least a sympathiser with the general drift of the movement along relatively romantic lines, rather than a follower of the more decoratively themed Art Nouveau.

Although perhaps not as wide-ranging and fundamental as the English incarnation, the German Arts & Crafts movement was active during the period of the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and could be classed as somewhat strident. From the re-unification of Germany in 1871, the romanticism generated by Germany's past became a much more defined nationalistic cause and, to some extent at least, the medieval inspired aspect of the movement became entangled within the aspirations of the German state for equality with France and Britain.

However, there was a genuine need in Germany for the dimension that would include the imaginary, the fabulous and the fairy tale as with any other society or community. There were a number of avenues and creative sources for which this need could be expressed; in Germany, in particular literature and music perhaps come first to mind. The craft system in Germany was also used creatively to express these needs and fine art painting, architecture, interior design and decoration helped to express the romanticism that was endemic in many European nation states at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries.

Textiles were a particularly good form in which to reflect the interest in medievalism and the mythology and fairy tales of early Europe. Embroidery and woven tapestry production was particularly useful in this respect as both crafts gave the impression of a generational longevity that could conceivably be traced back to the beginnings of the nation state. In Germany's case this could be seen as a golden age of medieval valour and courtship that existed at an indefinite period of history.

Hein's tapestry, although perhaps not the greatest achievement of the period, does sit well within the sentiment of the wide-ranging romanticism of the period. There is a particular emphasis on an illustrative tendency in the work, which is perhaps not surprising considering that Hein supplied a substantial amount of illustrative work, often on the theme of fairy tale and legend. 

Although there is nothing that particularly marks this tapestry as being intrinsically German rather than French or English, both countries produced work that was relatively similar in style and sentiment, Marchenbilder does draw attention to the fact that despite the Modernist slant on much of the German decorative and design work produced during this period, there was also a strong sentiment and connection with the past, no matter how romantically or imaginatively led. It is important to remember that the decorative arts are as complex as the society that drives them towards their creativity. Romantically motivated sentiment along with a formidably messianic belief in the power of Modernism can be contained within the same culture, at the same time, sometimes even by the same individuals. The complexity of the human dynamic will always be reflected within the creativity of the species and the broad aspects of that creativity and dynamism can sometimes seem confusingly diverse.

Further reading links:
The Arts & Crafts Movement
Arts & Crafts Movement (Art of Century)
The Arts and Crafts Movement in Europe and America: Design for the Modern World 1880-1920
Arts and Crafts Movement (World of Art)
Ladies, Whores, and Holy Women: A Sourcebook in Courtly, Religious, and Urban Cultures of Late Medieval Germany (Medieval German Texts in Bilingual Editions) (German Edition)
Medieval Germany 1056-1273
Medieval Germany: An Encyclopedia (Routledge Encyclopedias of the Middle Ages)
Fairy Tales from the German Forests
German Fairy Tales
German folk and fairy tales (Folk and fairy tales from many lands)
Where Magic Reigns; German Fairy Tales Since Grimm Retold By Gerntrude C. Schwebell

Textile Designs of Josef Zotti

Illustration: Josef Zotti. Hand printed linen textile design, c1913.

Josef Zotti was born and raised in South Tyrol, which is now known as Trentino and is an autonomous province of Italy, but until the end of the First World War was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In this respect, although Zotti was of Italian extraction, he spent most of his working career in Vienna, even after his homeland became part of Italy.

Zotti, although largely forgotten today was a relatively wide-scaling and prodigious designer who worked in a number of fields including interior, furniture, metal and textile design. He was closely associated with Josef Hoffmann and was indeed a student of his. His work is said to reflect the influence of Hoffmann and through that the Wiener Werkstatte, which was to colour the interpretation of Austrian design in the early years of the twentieth century. However, although his styling does follow Hoffmann it is also distinct enough to be seen as a separate entity from his former teacher.

Although much of Zotti's surviving output seems to specialise on furniture design in particular, his textile design work is worth mentioning as it is an integral part of the wider Viennese design style of the early twentieth century. The two textile designs illustrating this particular article were produced by Zotti in about 1913. They are both hand printed linens and were produced for and by S. E. Steiner & Co. Both are unmistakeably Austrian in style using the tell-tale simplicity of motif in order to produce a vibrant all-over pattern. It is unknown what colour combination was used on these two designs which is unfortunate, as part of the appeal of Zotti as a person and creative individual was his lengthy exploration of colour as a theoretical subject. Throughout his career, the designer lectured and published articles devoted to the importance of colour and its function, particularly within the framework of surface pattern. In this respect his textile output is an important element of early twentieth century Viennese styling which inevitably leads on to both modernism and the more commercial decorative style of the twentieth century such as Art Deco. However, although the colour combinations are missing, it does allow for the examination of the pattern itself which can sometimes clouded by the forceful and forthright nature of colour.

Illustration: Josef Zotti. Hand printed linen textile design, c1913.

Both patterns are simple, even naive examples of all-over pattern work using the natural world as at least an originating point of reference. In some respects, the work is similar to Josef Hoffmann especially when considering the use of regularised motifs repeated across the fabric. However, Hoffmann's work very often tended towards the structured, giving a grid-like format to textile design. Zotti's approach seemed somewhat freer and much more fluid and had perhaps a closer association with the likes of Emanuel Josef Margold, Erich Kleinhempel, Herta Koch and even Lotte Frommel-Fochler than it did Hoffmann, despite the fact that Zotti is often closely associated with Hoffmann. It is the wider Central European decorative style of Germany and Austria in which Zotti's work fits comfortably, rather than the narrower confines of Hoffmann himself who produced a style that was fitting to his own creative allegiance, not Zotti's.

Zotti's work in some ways at least, reflects the European-wide trend towards the loosening of the ties between formalised surface pattern and a much more relaxed and painterly approach. This was to prove to be an extremely rich and wide-scaling approach that was to see a surge of individually inspired decorative work that placed the emphasis on the ability of the creative individual rather than the accomplished but tightly bound and relatively narrow parameters of the traditional realm of the decorative artist. The early Art Deco era in France of the 1920s and the post-war period of the 1950s in Britain were particularly good examples of the individuality of the artistically motivated designer outweighing the needs of formalised decoration. In some respects, Zotti and his fellow Austrian designers of the early twentieth century could be said to have helped add the dimension of the creative into the mix of the European decorative arts, which had for centuries run on very narrow definitions of creativity and artistic license. It is, for example, the disbanding of formalised and symmetrical Art Nouveau renderings of surface pattern that gives much of the European decorative work of the 1920s such a charming appeal, particularly creatively. Although Zotti and his contemporaries cannot be held directly responsible for this development, they certainly set out a lot of the groundwork and it is not a huge jump creatively between Zotti's work of 1913 and the work being produced in the decorative arts world of 1923. 

Further reading links:
Josef Zotti, 1882-1953: Architetto e designer = Architekt und Designer (Italian Edition)
Wiener Werkstatte: 1903-1932 (Special Edition)
Wiener Werkstatte: Design in Vienna 1903-1932
Textiles of the Wiener Werkstatte: 1910-1932
Viennese Design and the Wiener Werkstatte
Josef Hoffmann: Autobiography
Josef Hoffmann Designs: Mak-Austrian Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna
Josef Hoffmann: The Architectural Work
Josef Hoffmann, 1870-1956: In the Realm of Beauty (Taschen Basic Architecture Series)
Klimt, Schiele, Moser, Kokoschka: Vienna 1900
Freud, Dora, and Vienna 1900
Rethinking Vienna 1900 (Austrian History, Culture and Society, 3)
Birth of the Modern: Style and Identity in Vienna 1900
Vienna 1900: Art, Life & Culture
Vienna 1900
Vienna 1900 (Memoires)
Vienna 1900 from Altenberg to Wittgenstein (Austrian Studies, 1)
Vienna 1900: Art, Architecture & Design