As work on Wexford's Ros Tapestry continues, Rosita Boland drops in to see how the huge local project, creating 15 tapestries, is progressing
If you were thinking about an arts-related project to benefit your community, carried out by your community, how big would you think? A mural? A concert? A book of local history? Or perhaps, something much more ambitious, on a much bigger scale?
In 1999, Dr Paul Mooney, Archdeacon of Ferns in Wexford, came up with a huge idea for a cultural community project. His church is St Mary's in New Ross. This 19th-century Church of Ireland building also has on its site the ruins of the church founded in 1210 by William Marshal, a famous English Knights Templar and his wife, heiress Isabel de Clare. The couple held land in England, Wales, France - and Ireland. Mooney's marvellously extravagant idea was to create the Ros Tapestry, a multipanel work which would record Wexford's Norman history, and which, when completed, would go on permanent display in St Mary's.
Tapestry is a craft that is medieval in origin. The world's most famous tapestry - or, more accurately, embroidery, but now always referred to as tapestry - is the Bayeux Tapestry. This is an eight-panel piece stitched together that tells the story of William the Conqueror's invasion of England, from a Norman viewpoint. Although there is dispute about where it was made, who commissioned it, and when exactly it was created, it is thought to date from the 11th century. The tapestry, all 230 feet of it, is on display at a special museum in Bayeux, Normandy. There is a 19th-century copy at the Museum of Reading in England.
Like the Bayeux, the method used in the Ros Tapestry is actually embroidery: tapestry, in general, is a form of needlework that uses only one type of stitch throughout the piece, such as in the simple kits one finds in any craft shop. Embroidery stitches - seeding, bullion knots, long-and-short, couching, stem, satin - are varied and complex, giving different illusions of shade, patterning and texture, making a much more individual and skilled piece of craftwork. However, tapestry is the word that now seems to have a generic association with needlework that depicts historical scenes, thus the naming of the Ros Tapestry.
The Bayeux is acknowledged as one of the great historical records of the Middle Ages. In an era predating books and photographs, it is also one of the best sources of information on early Norman dress, armour, war, castle-building, boat-building, hunting, and other elements of daily life.
"Reverend Mooney wanted to put New Ross on the map," Therese Perrott, the Ros Tapestry's administrator, explains. "The Bayeux Tapestry was the inspiration. He wanted to tell the whole history of the formation of New Ross. Tapestry lends itself to this historical format."
A group of people got together to discuss the practicalities of creating and administering such an immense project; among them, artist Ann Griffin-Bernstorff and historian Dr Billy Colfer. If the project was to get started, the historical background to the tapestries would have to be researched; paintings, or cartoons, as guides for the embroiderers, would have to be done. Through a patchwork of funding that included the Heritage Council, private and local donations and the Wexford Organisational Rural Development, money was found to pay a few key people, including administrator Perrott and a textile adviser, Alexis Griffin-Bernstorff, daughter of artist Ann Griffin-Bernstorff. But what about the army of people needed to actually make the tapestries?
It's a Wednesday afternoon at Killurin, a townland some 15 minutes from Wexford town. As the taxi pulls up at the Deeps, Phil and Peter Pearson's home, two dogs come scampering up to greet us. Wednesday is a busy day for these dogs to be meeting and greeting: for the last year, every Wednesday, up to 24 people have been arriving at the Deeps throughout the day, working as volunteer embroiderers on the two Ros Tapestry panels held at this location.
"I thought it was a very important project to support," explains Phil Pearson. The Pearson's drawing room has been turned into a workshop-cum-studio, where there are two cartoons and two panels-in-progress. This is one of several locations around county Wexford where panels are being worked on by local volunteers - all, to date, women. The panels held here are entitled, William Marshal, the Flower of Chivalry, and The Celts, an Island Fastness.
The panels are on two specially built wooden units, which can seat four people at a time, and which holds the embroidery panel taut at the place it is currently being worked on. Each wooden unit faces a cartoon, so the stitchers can constantly refer to the colours and shading they need to replicate in the linen panels. The sofa in the room is draped with a long, long piece of linen which has been lined with small pockets. Each contains a different coloured skein of wool: 400 in total; a gorgeous wash of blending colours, from burnt siennas to petrol blues, from forest green to glowing reds. Alexis Bernstorff carries this roll of linen pouches around with her to all the locations, in case the stitchers find they need to try another wool to achieve the correct colour effect. Each stitcher has her own wooden hoop, on which are looped the skeins of colours needed for the piece she is currently working on. When they finish their session, the hoops are left on the panel, waiting for the next volunteer to arrive.
Like the other locations in Wexford where panels are being worked on, the 60 volunteers come together once a week, and are visited in turn by Alexis Bernstorff, who oversees their work and progress, and advises those who need guidance. Before they started working on the panels, each group spent some months learning and practising stitches. The other locations round the county include New Ross, Ferns, Bunclody, Clonroche, Fethard and Poulfour. They are currently actively looking for volunteers for a new group in Wexford town. At present, of the 15 proposed tapestries, three are completed, eight are in progress and four have yet to be designed. The public had their first chance to see the three completed panels earlier this year, when they went on temporary display at Dublin Castle. They are now in storage.
At the Pearson's house in Killurin, three groups gather on Wednesdays, working in shifts; one in the morning and two over the afternoon. One of the paradoxes of the project is the huge extent of it, which contrasts with the way it is being carried out, on such a painstakingly miniature scale. Stitch by stitch, the 15 tapestries measuring 6ft by 4ft 6in (1.8m by 1.37m) are being created. Per session, each woman makes about one square inch of the tapestry: the three completed panels took their various groups three years each to complete. It is estimated that the whole project will take a decade.
"Every stitch is a stitch closer to finishing," states Patricia Jones, one of the eight-strong afternoon team.
"I love history," says Mary McDonald, explaining what has motivated her to be part of the project. "It's lovely to think that something we will have worked on will be left for another generation: become part of history."
"It's wonderful to be part of such a large group," says Margaret O'Dowd.
"It's our de-stresser of the week," declares Gillian Hearn. "I wouldn't miss coming here for anything." She is working on a tiny patch of a templar's tomb, in the Marshal panel. "You have to get the sense of shading right, so that it looks like a Picasso from a distance." Hearn has a personal connection with St Mary's church: her husband's grandmother is buried there.
It costs, on average, €14,000 for each panel. That covers the cost of materials, the fee to the textile consultant and to the artist, who paints the cartoon and then sketches in the outline on the linen as a guide to the stitcher. It doesn't - couldn't - cover the cost of the 60 stitchers around Wexford who have given of their services freely and with such enthusiasm. It's probably true that it's impossible to put a price on the work of 60 craftspeople over a period of 10 years. There will be a special extra panel, which will contain the names of all the stitchers who worked on the project, as is only fitting.
"I've signed my panel already," Patricia Jones observes ruefully, pointing to a tiny bloodspot on the edge of the canvas, made when she pricked her finger. "My DNA will be in this panel forever."
There has been, so far, no filmed documentary of the project. There should be. The making of the Ros Tapestry is a unique project, combining craft, community, local history and commitment. Its creation should be recorded properly, and the stories told of the people at the core of the project: the groups of women throughout Wexford who will have given of their time and talents for 10 years to create such a remarkable work of art.
