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Pnted-Wal-Hng-art - 8/23/17
"Tudor Painted Linen Wall
Hanging" by Lady Adelaide Sarsfield.
NOTE: See also the files: embroidery-msg,
Bayeux-Tapsty-art, Bayeux-Tap-DH-art, fab-painting-msg, Hist-of-Quilt-art,
silk-banners-msg, banners-msg, Sheetwalls-art.
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NOTICE -
This article was added to this set of files, called Stefan's Florilegium, with the permission of the author.
These files are available on the Internet at: http://www.florilegium.org
Copyright to the contents of this file remains with the author or
translator.
While the author will likely give permission for this work to be
reprinted in SCA type publications, please check with the author first or check
for any permissions granted at the end of this file.
Thank you,
Mark S. Harris...AKA:..Stefan li Rous
stefan at florilegium.org
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Tudor Painted Linen Wall Hanging
by Lady Adelaide Sarsfield
Shire of Cum an Iolair
Kingdom of Calontir
Summary:
Embroidered tapestries, such as
the Bayoux Tapestry (1066), and woven ones, such as The Unicorn Tapestries
(~1500), were rare, as they were extremely expensive and laborious. Painted linen wall hangings, also referred
to as water works, were first mentioned in England in the 14th
century. Shakespeare refers
several times to such painted cloths: Robert Arden, his grandfather, had eleven
of them. Estienne Perlin, writing in 1558, remarks that ‘the English use many
hangings, painted cloths (toilles pinctes), which are well done … you can enter
few houses but you find such cloths’. By the 1640’s, these decorative textiles
were considered old fashioned.
(Owlpen Manor Estate)
THE LIVELY PAINTED CLOTHS in Queen's Margaret's
Chamber at Owlpen are said to
be unique as a complete decorative scheme of such
work still in situ in England.
(Owlpen Manor Estate)
As painted linen wall hangings do
not last as long as their counterparts, the best resources I have found are
made by museum historians in England.
Other documentation is found by researching historical wills,
inventories, and account books.
One English historian, Melissa White (who was my original inspiration
for this project), imagines that in the environment of a Tudor era home, this
type of textile would only last a few years, at most. (Melissa White)
As I have painted often, but
never with egg tempera, I felt some research and experimentation was
desperately needed. I watched many
videos online, and also purchased a contemporary book on using egg
tempera. The book taught me how to
create the paint properly, processing the yolk so that none of the membranes or
whites of the egg get into the paint.
It also explained different layering techniques and texturing, which
were great to try out during my experiments. (Robert Vickery)
However, I knew that my finished textile would need to be able to roll
or fold up, in order to transport it to sites, it would not be feasible to do
much layering and texturing. In my
experiments, I found this to be true – areas that were too thick or had too
many layers would tend to flake off.
Perhaps if the textile were, indeed, affixed permanently to a wall, it
would last longer and not be so fragile.
Imagining that the typical Tudor
home would have access to various herbs and spices, I used my mortar and pestle
to finely grind a few different colored spices, to see how they worked for
pigments. They perhaps needed more
grinding, or strained through cloth to get the bits out, but the vividness of
the tubes of paint I had purchased was clearly evident, and preferable. Of course, the nutmeg made me long for
the holidays – in July, no less – and a nice tall glass of cold egg nog.
Items:
Frame: Stained wood frame of pine. This also acted as a stretching frame,
during the sizing step of the process.
At home, I have hooks on my wall that the top rail will rest upon,
although there are references of them being applied directly to the wall,
similar to wallpaper. The frame itself
is not necessarily part of my project, just simply a method of display. I make no claim to any Sciences,
including Woodworking.
Fabric: Four yards of optic white linen from
Carolina Calicos, purchased at Pennsic.
I felt the pattern would stand out well against the bright white. A natural color, instead of bright
white, would probably have been more accurate to the time period, but here I
made my decision based on aesthetics.
The extant pieces at the Owlpen Manor shows they used 42 inch unbleached
linen canvas. (Owlpen Manor
Estate)
Sizing: Rabbit glue was the period method used
to size fabric for painting.
Today, it is still used to size canvas, but also commonly used to seal
instruments such as violins, so that they can easily be steamed to be taken
apart for repairs. Due to this
contemporary use, rabbit glue is still available at a relatively low cost, in
granule form, which is then boiled for a few minutes to dissolve. I have also noticed that the rabbit
glue gives a tiny hint of sparkle to the linen, up close. Twelve tablespoons of the granules were
used.
Paint: Sennelier Egg Tempura paint pigments
were used. While the paint set I
purchased came with a bottle of contemporary medium, I opted for egg yolk to
bind the pigments to the linen. I
found that the egg yolks did not have a strong odor, unlike their counterpart,
yet they worked just as well. Fifteen egg yolks were used in this project, with the
egg whites being made into meringue cookies, and many of the shells were
crushed and mixed in the soil of my garden.
Brushes: A four-inch painter’s brush was used to
apply the rabbit glue during sizing.
As the egg tempura paint works much like gauche, so my
illumination/watercolor brushes worked perfectly.
Miscellaneous: Straight pins and woolen twine, to help
with stretching during sizing.
Process:
As the wall hanging would be
customized to fit the frame it would hang on, I began with this. A previous attempt at a frame was
modeled after a friend’s practice pell, which, in retrospect, may have been too
beefy for such a light item.
Therefore, the frame I built this time was much daintier.
After the frame was complete, I
hung the raw linen on it, to see what width it should be. From experience, I already knew the
wall hanging would have a seam in the center. Once measured, I cut the pieces to size, and hand stitched
them together and hemmed the edges.
The top and bottom were made into sleeves to fit the top and bottom
rails of the frame.
Once the linen was hung properly,
it needed to be stretched. The top
and bottom rails provided vertical stretching, but from previous experience, I
knew it would also need stretching horizontally. To achieve that, I used a woolen twine, wrapped around the
side poles of the frame, and attached to the edges of the linen using straight
pins. Once it was strung up, the
string could be tightened (such as with a bodice), and thus the fabric was made
taut.
Boiling the rabbit glue for about
5 minutes, I applied it immediately to the linen, ensuring even
application. Before the glue dried
too much, I had to remove the twine, pins, and rails, or they would have been
stuck there permanently:
especially the lower rail, as all the glue tends to drip to the bottom.
The next step was to pencil the
design on. Historically, there
were two design themes: repeating
designs, such as Melissa White used above, and descriptions of important
events, as used in the Owlpen Manor Estate (mainly illustrating the Biblical
story of the life of Joseph and his brothers) and the Tudor Merchant’s House
(below). The design selected was
one I found on The Tudor Group’s website (The Tudor Group UK), described as a
painted linen wall hanging that one of their resident historian/artists, Mark
Goodman, had created for display in their museum. I found that the simple Tudor rose design to be very
pleasing to the eye and relatively easily duplicated, and as a lot of it would
need to be done freehanded, any slight spacing or size misjudgments may be
forgiven.
Tenby as it was in 1457 when Jasper Tudor rebuilt
the walls.
Devised by Anthony Barton of York and
Dr. Charles Kightly, and painted by Barton in
2012. (Tudor Merchant’s House)
However, I did notice that many
of these museum creations did not typically follow strict current day standards
of symmetry – a line that seemed it should be drawn using a straight edge would
not be, and the painting so large, that it tended to drift off the mark, and
was still pleasing to the eye for its inconsistency. This unevenness is evident in Melissa White’s work for the
Bayleaf House. I still used a
yardstick to measure the center of each rose, and had the outside shape of the
rose, and rough outline of the design in between, on a template to use. I did keep in mind that any pencil
marks on the linen may show through the paint, and if it were not painted over,
they may not fully erase. Most
lighter colors of egg tempera would show anything underneath it, which is one
reason it is so versatile a medium, although the white is simply white gauche,
so it is opaque. Besides using the
two templates and a yardstick, the rest of the work is freehanded. Every rose is unique!
The Tudor Rose is the result of
Henry Tudor marrying Elizabeth of York – The House of Lancaster’s red rose, and
the House of York’s white rose, combined to create a Tudor Rose, both red and
white. The Tudor Rose has been
used by every British Monarch since Henry VII, as a Royal Badge.
I plan to create several of these
painted wall hangings, and bring them to events as the theme suits. They are intended to be used as
backdrops for photos, gracefully divide a room, to camouflage mundanities, and,
in general, improve the atmosphere of any given event. While they don’t seem to be suited well
for camping events (they probably would not handle wet weather or excessive
winds), if I ever find myself in the possession of a large enough pavilion to
require a dividing wall inside, these would make a very lovely wall.
My very first piece was the Norse
themed one that I gifted to Their Majesties, Logan and Ylva, at the Feast of
Eagles, one of my local shire’s events, earlier this summer.
References:
Tudor Merchant’s House - Dr Charles Kightly, an expert in historic interiors, advised to use
brightly painted linen cloths to improve the historic atmosphere of the Tudor
Merchant’s House in England.
https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/tudor-merchants-house/features/the-painted-cloths-at-tudor-merchants-house
The Tudor Group: A modern reproduction of a Tudor
painted cloth. Painted on linen
canvas using pigments that were known and used in the period. Such painted cloths were fairly common
items displayed in people’s homes in the sixteenth century.
https://www.facebook.com/TudorGroupUK/photos/a.262393380474441.59881.262392557141190/1083601658353605/?type=1&theater
Melissa White, artist and
historian at the Bayleaf Manor, UK, discusses the recreation of historic
painted linen wall hangings.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/8e55f480-e61a-11e5-a09b-1f8b0d268c39.html
Owlpen Manor Estate, an excellent
resource for images and references to Shakespeare quotes, and also lists
surviving pieces of Tudor linen wall hangings.
http://www.owlpen.com/manor/painted-cloths
New Techniques in
Egg Tempera, by Robert Vickery (1989). A famous
contemporary artist shows his revolutionary new techniques for painting in a
centuries-old medium, egg tempera.
(Book on display table)
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Copyright 2017 by Lee Waldack. <Lee.waldack at gmail.com>.
Permission is granted for republication in SCA-related publications, provided
the author is credited. Addresses
change, but a reasonable attempt should be made to ensure that the author is
notified of the publication and if possible receives a copy.
If this article is reprinted in a publication, please place a notice
in the publication that you found this article in the Florilegium. I would also
appreciate an email to myself, so that I can track which articles are being
reprinted. Thanks. -Stefan.
<the end>