Oh, what on earth to do with this tapestry?

[JoceAndChris]

I spent a solid year completing the Deer section of Henry Dearle's Greenery.

http://www.bethrussellneedlepoint.com/needlepoint/Henry-Dearle-grnry.htm

My plan was to complete the other two sections in subsequent years, creating a 5 foot frieze, for the dining room.

But I now feel the tapestry is too anachronistic for a Regency cottage ornee, and have no heart to continue. It needs to go in a late Victorian scheme.

I could frame it and stick it on Ebay, or I could hang it and live with anachronism.

What do you think? Do you mind having art/ needlework from contrasting eras?

 

[Feltwell]

If you like it and feel it will go with the room then it doesn't matter what era it's from. It's your home!

The Victorian dwellers of Beacon Cottage would not have turned it down for being too modern.

 

[Lime]

My house has many prospective additions that are now not in period, because our taste/style has "moved on"/evolved, boxed up or in drawers.
I'd fold it away to be completed when and if you wish to continue.

 

[robgil]

You cannot live in Regency times Joce, hang it up and be proud of it.

 

[CatherineB]

We've had this discussion before, haven't we? Of whether a house has to have everything coming from one "period" in order to be genuine.

The answer surely has to be a resounding NO!

I think it would look beautiful in your house Joce, and you are a woman of amazing talent to have completed it. Frame it, put it up, and be proud!

 

[robgil]

Did people in Regency times enjoy antiques? I am sure they did , and if so not even the people then had a totally regency theme in their homes. The regency period spans from 1714 to 1830 , the victorian period was from 1837 to 1901.
so , people in 1830 didnt just think 'oh god , ive got 7 years to totally change my style and become a victorian'.
I am sure plenty of styles merged between periods and overlapped.

 

[Penners]

I could hang it and live with anachronism.

It could easily and comfortably join all the other anachronisms in your house.

Flushing loos, an oil-fired Rayburn, electric light, running hot water, photocopies, hi-fi, a TV... you.

If you like it and are proud of it - hang it!

 

[JoceAndChris]

Many thanks for all the votes of to hell with anachronism on the tapestry front. I think I will stitch another section after all, I love doing it ( more than the finished article).

William Morris and Henry Dearle looked back to medieval times for their inspiration -I wonder what Regency folk made of the medieval stuff that surely was far more in evidence in their time. I suppose they liked it, hence the Gothick. I could, perhaps, argue for my tapestry having a place in a Gothick styled passageway, in a sort of Walpole way? :wink:

 

[Penners]

I think I will stitch another section after all, I love doing it

My old mum, now 93 and very frail, used to be an ace tapestry-ist (-er? -ite?). She would spend every evening in front of the TV, with an open book on the arm of her chair, doing her tapestry. She could tell you every detail of the TV programme, the precise plot of the book, and she never missed a stitch.

It's true - women can multi-task.

 

[Moo]

Actually, you're not doing tapestry at all, Joce.
Tapestries are woven, on a loom. What you're doing is canvas work - stitching into a pre-woven canvas.


ps
Did you know that canvas work can involve much more than plain tent-stitch? There are hundreds of wonderful stitches, each creating a different effect or texture.
I'm surprised that Nigel hasn't discovered them and embarked on making his own upholstery fabric.

 

[JoceAndChris]

I expect he will, in the fullness of time.

I suppose I did know that Moo; I was being slack with my terminology. I used to do a lot of fancy-work (given most of it away), these old rags I did I are mainly stuffed in drawers.

My favourite is to trace a design onto fine linen and do free style embroidery, selecting long and short, bullion, stem, or wahtever, at a whim. If I could find a really good book of regency desgns I'd love to copy some. It's a very absorbing past-time. (The counted cross-stitch though, in the sampler, was a bit of a night-mare with each cross being around one mm, and one mistake wrecking the whole thing - it took a solid 6 weeks )

I was encouraged to do this kind of work from the age of 8 and think it's been good for my dexterity and awareness of colour and form; it's a pity it's fallen out of fashion. What to do with the finished article is a mystery though! :lol:

 

[Nigel Watts]

Bit slow on the uptake here - still suffering from seasonal Scroogitis I'm afraid.

Is that your embroidery Joce? Its stunning. I can see where your patience come from!

As it happens I have done some needlepoint - when I was about 10 or 11. We didnt have TV and my mother and sisters did them, so I joined in.

Regency and Victorian ladies did lots of craft work. My mother's great aunts were constantly making things while being waited on hand and foot by their staff (whom they paid out of wealth inherited from their plantation and slave-owning forebears).

Most needlepoint seems to have ended up as cushion covers or other upholstery, whereas embroidery would be applied to table linen or framed and hung on the wall as pictures. Having grown up in a house where the seat furniture was liberally strewn with hand stitched needlepoint cushions (in a myriad of uncoordinated colours) this seems to me the most natural use for it.

 

[JoceAndChris]

Praise is very special coming from you. I also grew up with talented needlewomen in the family, which means I always compare anything that I make and am never very pleased. Then when I go round some of the country houses and see some of the framed needlework I'm so impressed I can't believe it, and feel like never doing any ever again. But then I remember how soothing the action of stitching is and I want to start something else.

How lovely that you also did needlepoint as a boy, and look where that's taken you as a man! In some ways, men have more natural ability at this kind of work as I think they're better at measuring, and in the case of huge heavy curtains, controlling the fabric, and getting the needle through many thicknesses. Your curtains were a triumph, so much better than anything I've ever made.

 

[Moo]

If I could find a really good book of regency desgns I'd love to copy some.

Could you copy/adapt something from a gorgeous wallpaper?

 

[JoceAndChris]

That's a brilliant idea- easy to trace as well.