Three of the weavers engaged in the project to create seven hand-woven tapestries for the palace have recently returned from New York. It’s an annual pilgrimage which sees them visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art to study the original Hunt of the Unicorn series, which is the basis for the Stirling set. One of their key tasks is colour matching. This involves making sure that all the colours which they use are true to those in the Renaissance versions.

While many tapestries have faded over time, Louise Martin, senior weaver, says the ones preserved in America remain in very good condition – despite having endured some tough times. “We are very lucky because there is still a huge amount of colour and that’s despite the fact that they were looted during the French Revolution and suffered a lot of damage before reappearing again, when they were being used by a peasant woman to cover her vegetables,” she said. A big advantage of being able to get access to the originals is that if colours on the front do seem faded, they can look at the backs, which tend to have been less exposed to light.

The New York visits have also been a chance to promote the project overseas and to show off the expertise of the team. This time round Louise and her colleagues gave demonstrations to around 170 people. In addition to work, the weavers do have a little time to themselves. And in Louise’s case, she spent it looking at tapestries – including one which is ultra modern, but sounds like it’s from a medieval legend. “It was quite something, golden in colour and it’s around 1.5m long, and it’s woven from the silk of cannibal spiders from Madagascar. The threads are said to be as strong as steel. The spiders have to be kept apart while they produce their silk, or they eat each other, but after they are done they are released back into the wild.”

To find out a little more about the trip, see the recent blog post written by Louise for the castle website.


Read more about the palace project