At the Textile Center of Minnesota garage sale in April, my best find was a set of cards depicting medieval Norwegian tapestries. They must have been languishing in someone’s cupboard for several decades, waiting for just the right recipient – me. I am just beginning a tapestry of my daughter in medieval Norwegian style. Her ruff will become a scarf, her crown a halo of curly hair, and in her upraised hand, an Iphone. The tapestries on the cards included a variety of face styles, better than the one I had drawn.
Aren’t these inspirational, charming, and filled with variation?
Here are all the cards. The faces seem a bit unusual in this one; I haven’t seem many old Norwegian tapestries that depict an iris in the middle of a circle for an eye.
This one has a very weird baby Jesus body!
My tapestry will have about this level of abstraction, and a red horse, too. I love the stylized red, blue, and green horses of the old tapestries; it was a hard decision to make.
Undoubtedly the colors of this tapestry filled with dizzying pattern have faded. I wish I could see the strong, true original colors.
The king and queen have nicely rendered expressions, while the face of the man on the other side of the table didn’t receive quite so much care. It’s hard to decipher the items on the table. Two wine glasses are clear, and the center image, although it looks like an old-fashioned telephone, might be some sort of chalice, too. What are the other table-top items?
The word used to describe this tapestry on the card was epitophium, which I am guessing would be a sort of tapestry done in memorial for someone, an epitaph. The figure in this detail is wearing a stylish hat.
As the popular images of the wise and foolish virgins were woven repeatedly in Western Norway, often on pillowtops, the figures became increasingly stylized. I like the birds tucked into the background on this piece, and the slightly nervous, wavy background reminds me of a Norwegian painting nearly 200 years later, Edvard Munch’s Skrik (The Scream).
I love volunteering at the Textile Center of Minnesota Garage sale each year. I inevitably come home with treasures, enjoy the hours with other volunteers, and see crazy stuff. Like, really, who would make a quilt out of the ridiculous sunbonnet squares (displayed by super-volunteer Tom Skogstrom)? In retrospect, I should have bought them! Wouldn’t it make a fun challenge to give them to your most creative artist friends for embellishment, deconstruction, destruction, or other transformation? (Does the sunbonnet vaguely resemble Donald Trump’s hair?)
I can’t wait until next year’s sale.
I have posted about this quilt on my own blog. Do yourself a favour and check out http://www.museum.msu.edu/glqc/collections_2001.158.01.html where poor old Sue comes to a gruesome end. Actually to a range of gruesome ends.
Perfect! My favorite one was “Eaten by a Snake.” Thanks! Robbie
Thanks for posting these–what a great find! I’m interested in learning more about this. I have a few books (*Norwegian Tapestry Weaving,* Marie Brekke Koppen) but do you know anyone (anywhere) who teaches this kind of tapestry? I’ve taken a couple of the guild tapestry classes which were a good start but I’d like to do more.
Thanks!
Hi Kevin, I plan to teach a workshop on Norwegian tapestry weaving at Vesterheim Norwegian-American Museum, in September of 2017. And after that, probably at the Weavers Guild of Minnesota, too. Details of the class will be available later this year.
That’s funny–one of the most-read posts on my blog was also about the death of Sunbonnet Sue! There are a lot of us haters out there! The tapestry details are wonderful–I wouldn’t have taken the time to really look if you hadn’t featured them here, with your comments.
The other image I hate almost as much is the rear end of the bending-over woman that people put on wooden stakes in their gardens.