Knowing the time it takes my wife to needle point a large Christmas Stocking or to make a cross stitch sampler that is 18” by 10” the labor hours to create this massive work of art and history has always been a fascination to us. We saw some great tapestry and such at a Mary Queen of Scots exhibit at the Royal Albert some years back but have never seen this masterpiece.
My wife was chaperone for a youth tour in France and too late to alter schedules found out she was only 70 kilometers away — still talks about it wistfully.
I was able to assist in the planning to save some giant WWI tapestries that are held by the Liberty Memorial WWI Museum but they were only 75 years old at the time.
I’ve done needlepoint and cross stitch in the past - it is amazingly slow-going and time consuming.
This tapestry looks like it’s all been done by the same hand, but it couldn’t have been. There must’ve been a lot of coordination going on to have the same types of threads/wool used, stitches ‘just so’, all ‘dye lots’ the same, etc.
I also crochet, and no two people crochet in the same gauge either, so this tapestry really is something.
I crack up over all of the ‘finger pointing’ it depicts, too, LOL!