CovSoc Vice Chair, Peter Walters, reviews the latest book about one of the city’s finest treasures. Peter writes….
Five years ago, in the autumn before Covid, historians and conservators gathered in St Mary’s Hall to consider and share opinions on the hall’s early Tudor tapestry.
The conference triggered a flurry of research into a textile masterpiece about which surprisingly little was known but which was still hanging on the wall for which it had been made, more than 500 years earlier. And that has led in turn to a handsome and beautifully illustrated book on the tapestry, edited by Coventry-born historian Dr Mark Webb, who first became aware of it as a child, when his father took him to see it.
Each chapter has been written by a contributor to that 2019 conference, including late medieval specialist Dr Joanna Laynesmith, leading textile conservator Wendy Toulson and architectural historian Dr Jonathan Foyle, whose special interest is the window above the tapestry, now itself regarded as a masterpiece in stained glass.
Mark Webb has written a chapter on the early sixteenth century Coventry context to the tapestry, and further chapters on the development of St Mary’s Hall itself and on the iconography of the tapestry have come from George Demidowicz, who was Coventry’s Conservation Officer for more than twenty years, and the Coventry-based independent scholar and researcher Fred Hepburn.
What has been produced is a work of eminent scholarship but also a very readable assessment of the tapestry, which has begun to answer some of the many questions surrounding it.
Put briefly, we are now fairly certain that it was made in Tournai in Flanders, now Belgium, that it was probably commissioned by the wealthy Trinity Guild, whose guildhall was St Mary’s, that it may have cost up to £1000, a staggering sum at the time, and that it was made to be seen first by King Henry VII, whose veneration of its central figure, his uncle Henry VI, was well known. It’s probable, however, that the king died before the tapestry was finished, now thought to be around 1510.
As research continues, the tapestry and window above, are now firmly installed on the map of nationally important works of art. And the book is a worthy companion to them, reflecting that enhanced status.
The St Mary’s Hall Coventry Tapestry. Weaving The Threads Together, is published by Shaun Tyas at £20. At present it is only available to buy at St Mary’s Hall itself.