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The Collation

A late 15th-century tapestry fragment with visible restorations

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Erin Blake

is currently the Senior Cataloger responsible for art and manuscripts at the Folger Shakespeare Library. From 2000 to 2014, Erin served as the Folger's Curator of Art and Special Collections. In 2014, she became Head of Collection Information Services. After a four-year tour of duty in senior management, she happily returned to working hands-on with the collection in 2018. In addition to her Folger work, Erin teaches The History of Printed Book Illustration in the West at Rare Book School, and is a member of the RBMS Bibliographic Standards Committee. — View all posts by Erin Blake

Comments

Fascinating – I never would have got that.
So really it’s Mrs Folger who is to blame for the tapestry’s odd two-tone condition, then, because she was the one who decided it would be a good idea to hang it somewhere it was going to be exposed to a lot of sunlight?
Anyway, I don’t think the quality of the photograph really allows for any definite conclusions, because it’s so blurry. If I squint at the photograph a bit, I think I can see a faint outline of the arc on the left edge of the unrestored section below the stag’s feet, but perhaps I’m just imagining it. Either way, it’s possible the colour contrast between the restored and unrestored sections was already faintly visible in 1931, but got more pronounced over time. Though it does make you wonder why they left it hanging in the same place for decades!

Elisabeth Chaghafi — March 4, 2020

Did they make reproductions of these Tapestries……❓

CLAUDIA Craig — October 13, 2021

I don’t know of any exact copies of this particular tapestry, but there are similar tapestries from the period (such as the one shown in plate 83a of Betty Kurth, Die Deutschen Bildteppiche des Mittelalters (Vienna, 1926) in the blog post), and there are modern reproductions of this style of tapestry (such as the Stirling Tapestries).

Erin Blake — October 14, 2021