FEATURE
THE HOLY GRAIL
TAPESTRIES
The Holy Grail tapestries are some of the jewels of BMT’s collection and we are fortunate to have the most complete set in the UK. How the tapestries came into being is itself a fascinating story. William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones met at Exeter College, Oxford in 1853. They shared a love of the medieval and the romantic, reading the romantic poets to each other and later Malory and his ‘Le Morte D’Arthur’. Originally they intended to take Holy Orders, but they discovered Rossetti’s work and art became their obsession. Morris soon decided that his forte was not painting and became an architect, but he was drawn towards craft, establishing Morris, Marshall, Faulkner and Co in 1861 to pursue decorative work. This became Morris and Co in 1875, showcased by a shop on Oxford Street. Morris was a committed socialist and felt strongly that 19th century industrial working methods produced poor quality goods and were destroying the working man. He felt that “nothing should be made by a man’s labour that is not worth the making” and that human beings needed to find pleasure in everyday surroundings. He very much wanted to bring hand-crafted work to the working people but was quickly to discover that the time taken in handworking put the products out of the reach of the working classes. He pursued the medieval style of weaving, known as high-warp. The art of high-warp weaving had almost died out in Britain until reintroduced by William Morris. In the 1880s, most tapestry weaving was low-warp where the frame and warp were parallel to the floor. Morris felt that this resulted in poor quality design. In high-warp looms, the warp threads are set vertically in a vertical frame. The weaver has to manually lift the warp threads to pass a bobbin through them. High-warp meant that Morris could achieve the highly detailed designs that he wanted. This was the method used at his tapestry works at Merton Abbey. The technique of high-warp weaving required the design to be placed against the warp, the main elements were traced on using Indian ink. Weaving took place from the reverse of the work, with the design being created sideways. The coloured designs were on benches behind the weavers – if they had been placed in front of the work they would have blocked the light. Mirrors 10
ARTEFACTS
SPRING 2022 • Issue 68
were suspended in front of the tapestries to enable the weavers to follow their progress. Morris had a team of apprentices to carry out the weaving, they joined as young boys and Morris felt that their small, flexible fingers were most suitable for the work. The tapestries had cotton warps, the vertical threads. The weft threads were more varied. Wool was standard, silk gave shimmer and glisten and was used in flowers and garments. Mohair and camel hair were used to give texture, especially for animals – these yarns gave a 3D effect. Natural dyes gave the colours. The Holy Grail tapestries were commissioned in 1886 as part of a scheme to decorate Stanmore Hall, the home of William KnoxD’Arcy. Originally from Devon, he made his money in Australia, first as a solicitor and later as the sole investor in a gold mine. The commission was for a set of six tapestries telling the story with a further six decorative tapestries or verdures that hung below with captions explaining the subject of the narrative piece above. Burne-Jones created the main design, John Henry Dearle (originally an apprentice and later manager of the tapestry works) made recommendations of colours based on dyes and added foreground and background details. They cost £3500 (£318,000 today); Burne-Jones received £1000 as his fee for the design. They were woven between 1892 and 1895. Although a socialist, Morris was something of an intellectual snob in relation to design and he didn’t like Stanmore Hall or the architectural changes made to the house, but it was a very large commission, so he accepted it. The set of tapestries were never remade in full again, but there were later weavings of some of the designs. In 1895-6: ‘The Arming and Departure’, ‘The Failure of Sir Gawaine’ and ‘The Attainment‘ were made for Laurence Hodson, Compton Hall, Wolverhampton. They were acquired by BMT in 1907. Those made for Mr Hodson were the last works that Morris himself supervised and it was felt (by Morris) that they were technically superior to the Stanmore Hall set.
