BIGGEST TAPESTRY IN WORLD

Taupo Times, Volume I, Issue 44, 12 November 1952, Page 2

BIGGEST TAPESTRY IN WORLD

MADE FOR NEW CATHEDRAL When the Midland town of Coventry, in England, was so badly blitzed dnring the war its Cathedral was severely damaged and a new one has been designed recently by Basil Spence. Behind The high altar of the new Cathedral will be a huge coloured tapestry, designed by one of Britain's most famous artists, Graham Sutherland. This great tapestry, said Robin Cockburn in the B.B.O.'s "Radio Newsreel," will be the biggest ever made,.some sixty-two feet high and forty feet wide.# Making a loom for it will be something of an engineering feat and it may be necessary to knock two studios into one while the six artist weavers on the job will possibly have to set up some kind of "interoom" with each other while they are at work. The studio where the tapestry will be made is the only weaving concern of /its kind left in Britain and Cockburn described something of the way in which the work is done there. The first step is the artist's straight painting of the proposed tapestry; this is then enlarged to scale and the colours are copied and sent tjo the dyers. When all the materials are ready the weavers begin, working behind the tapestry to a reflection of the weaving in a standing mirror, a niethod which is traditional. / They start at the foot of the tapestry and work upwards, winding the warps down from a roller as they weave. The warps are stiff fibres knitting together the pattern, which is already etched into the wool in Indian ink. On small tapestries for ordinary rooms there are twelve to seventeen warps to an inch but in this vast rapostry there will be only five to an inoh as the closest range at which it will be seen in the cathedral will be some tlrrty feet. The finished tapestry will weight about three quarters of a ton and fourteen hundred pounds of Cheviot wool will be used in it. One thing worries the studio. By tradition a finished tapestrj^ is nearljr always cut from the loom by a woman, and this is quite a tough job. Cutting the world's biggest tapestry will be rather like cutting sixty feet of carpet.