Wall Art

My grandmama loved British history. She loved it so much that she painted names and tiny portraits and family trees of all the British royalty on the wall above her bed. As a child, I used to lie on that bed and ponder the wall, intrigued by the abundance of Edwards and Henrys and Charleses, and amazed that an adult was allowed to paint whatever she wanted on her bedroom wall.

My grandmama also loved needlwork. She combined the two loves on a stretch of cloth, upon which she painstakingly stitched a segment of the Bayeux Tapestry.

Grandmama embroidering,
approx. 1970

The original Bayeux Tapestry is so named because it was found, and now hangs in a museum, in Bayeux, Normandy, France. It tells the story of the Norman conquest of 1066 A.D., and was probably embroidered by people who were alive at that time. The original tapestry is 230 feet long, but my stalwart grandmama chose to reproduce a section only about eight feet in length. Her rendition now hangs in a museum of my family's own history, namely my parents' home in central Texas.

A Clever Someone has animated the tale of the Bayeux Tapestry and supplemented the original Latin annotations with English subtitles. Click the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDaB-NNyM8o