In June of this year a beautiful tapestry, “The Mystic Hunt of the Unicorn”, the final one in a set of seven tapestries, entitled The Unicorn Tapestries, was hung in the royal apartments of Stirling Castle in Scotland. This brought to an end an incredibly complex and difficult project which took 14 years to complete. These tapestries were all woven by hand using techniques dating back to the 1400s that require highly skilled, complex, and painstaking work – a labour of love, just like the daily writing of the 3G blog. All seven were commissioned specially for Stirling Castle in 2001 as part of a scheme to restore the interiors of the palace to how they looked in the 1540s when it was home to James V of Scotland, his wife and their young daughter, Mary Queen of Scots.
Four of the seven tapestries were woven in a purpose-built studio within Stirling Castle. Over the years when I went to Scotland to see our step-sister Jan, who lived in Stirling, she took me to see the weavers at work. As she paid council tax she was eligible to pop into the Castle whenever she wanted, free of charge, and this she did and so she saw the progress of the project and pictures gradually appearing. Sadly Jan died just before Christmas last year and Sheila and I both miss her very much.
After James V’s marriage to a Frenchwoman, Mary of Guise, his palace in Stirling began to change as she introduced Renaissance refinement into the predominantly medieval Scottish way of life. Soon French fashion and ideas arrived in the Scottish court as messengers came back from France bringing Mary bolts of fine cloth, plant cuttings, masons and probably tapestries. We know from inventories that James owned over 100 tapestries; hanging them on stone walls was the only way to keep the huge rooms even remotely warm. We also know that at least two of the tapestries featured “The historie of the unicorne”. At that time the unicorn was to be seen in the Scottish royal coat of arms and later, in 1603, it came to England, to take its place in the royal coat of arms of the United Kingdom when James VI, son of Mary Queen of Scots, became King James 1 of England. By the way, since according to legend a free unicorn was considered a very dangerous and powerful beast, the poor heraldic unicorn is always portrayed in chains. But he could by tamed by a virgin, so they say.
Inspiration and know-how for the unicorn tapestries came from the Metropolitan Museum of New York (which has a set of seven tapestries woven in the early 1500s in the Low Countries) and from West Dean Tapestry Studios in West Sussex where some of the weavers teach. This was the biggest weaving project undertaken in the UK for 100 years and brought together an international team of 18 weavers. It reminds me a little of the daily 3G Kili Climb blog that Jae and Sheila have been writing for over five months now; a big project that is hard work. Fortunately they are supported by friends and family, with guest blogs like this one helping to keep the project going. Jae, Sheila and team, keep going. The end is in sight!