Bayeux tapestry in lace

 

The Bayeux tapestry is currently being exhibited at the British Museum in London so I was fascinated to discover this lace version from the early twentieth century. This lace rendition is not an exact replica of the original but a summary of the main events in the famous embroidery. It was designed by a company in Paris as a filet lace pattern for Lady Viola Talbot, who was described in the January 1908 edition of Needlecraft Monthly Magazine as ‘one of the most expert workers in our times of filet lace’. The patterns were made for Lady Viola on the understanding that they were ‘not given or lent to anyone else’. However seven scenes are reproduced in the French Album of Filet I and excerpts from two are shown here.

The Bayeux tapestry is not a tapestry but an embroidered scroll depicting a period in history when a Norman duke invaded England in 1066 and killed the newly crowned King Harold to become king himself as William the Conqueror. The panel above begins with the scene where Harold is supposed to be swearing an oath to support William’s plan to claim the throne of England on the death of Edward the Confessor. Harold seems to be doing so quite straightforwardly in the lace version, although he seems more equivocal about the whole idea in the embroidery.

Another interesting difference between the two panels can be seen in the fighting scenes. In general, the lace design is much more static than the embroidery and this is most obvious in the action scenes. In the image where the Norman horsemen attack the English shield wall, the embroidery shows the horsemen on the right and the English on the left, the opposite of the lace version, but also surrounds them with dead and falling soldiers suggesting the horror of the battle.

This part of the lace shows Harold returning from Normandy to the court of King Edward, who now looks old and frail. While the scene below depicts Norman soldiers burning homes prior to the battle. Once again the embroidery seems more lively than the lace, with a woman and her child escaping the burning building in the original but the lace version just depicting a woman with her arms outstretched.

Filet lace is a type of darning on net that was undergoing a revival in the early twentieth century. It is based on the square grid of the net and this may be the reason why the design appears more static than the free-flowing embroidery of the original Bayeux tapestry. To produce this complicated pattern in filet lace would have required great skill and time, and although Lady Viola was an expert I do not think she ever actually made this lace Bayeux tapestry, which is a great shame as it would have been lovely to see it the lace and not just the design for it.