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The Quaker tapestry consists of 77 panels illustrating the history of Quakerism from the 17th century up to the present day. The idea of Quaker Anne Wynn-Wilson, the tapestry has a permanent home at the Friends Meeting House at Kendal, Cumbria, England. Two thousand men, women and children from 8 countries worked on the panels between 1981 and 1989, and the tapestry is worked in crewel embroidery.
The Quaker tapestry consists of 77 panels illustrating the history of Quakerism from the 17th century up to the present day. The idea of Quaker Anne Wynn-Wilson, the tapestry has a permanent home at the Friends Meeting House at Kendal, Cumbria, England.
The design was heavily influenced by the Bayeux tapestry, and includes similar design choices, including three horizontal divisions within panels, embroidered outlines for faces and hands, and solid infilling of clothing, which is embroidered in the Bayeux Technique.
2000 men, women and children from 8 countries worked on the panels between 1981 and 1989. The tapestry is worked in crewel embroidery. In addition to using four historic and well-known stitches (Split Stitch, Stem Stitch, Chain Stitch, and Peking Knot), Wynn-Wilson invented a new corded stitch, known as Quaker Stitch, to allow for tight curves on the lettering.
Each panel measures 25 inches wide by 21 inches tall.
The Prism (Title Panel)
George Fox's convincement (A1)
James Nayler's call to ministry (A2)
James Parnell: Meetings for Sufferers (A3)
Richard Sellar (A4)
The good ship 'Woodhouse' (A5)
John Woolman (A6)
Conscientious objection (A7)
Manchester Conference 1895 (A8)
Oaths (A9)
George Fox travels to Sedbergh (B1)
Mary Fisher, Elizabeth Hooton (B2)
John Bright (B3)
Publishers of Truth (B4)
Stephen Grellet (B5)
Woodbrooke, Selly Oak, Birmingham (B6)
Service Overseas (B7)
Quaker Peace Action caravan (B8)
Swarthmoor Hall, Ulverston (C1)
Margaret Fell, Mother of Quakerism (C2)
Keep your meetings (C3)
Meeting houses (C4)
Meeting Houses overseas (C5)
Meeting Houses in the Community (C6)
Quaker schools (C7)
Marriage (C8)
Pilgrimages (C9)
Children and Young People (C10)
The Leaveners (C11)
George Fox at Lichfield, Pendle Hill (D1)
Quaker Simplicity (D2)
Personal Devotion (D3)
Coalbrookdale (D4)
Innocent Trades (D5)
Quaker merchants (D6)
Railways (D7)
Quaker Botanists (D8)
Quaker Doctors (D9)
Quaker Scientists (D10)
Industrial Welfare (D11)
Query 19 (D12)
Scott - Bader Commonwealth (D13)
Fox at Ulverston (E1)
John Bellers (E2)
Bankering (E3)
Criminal Justice (E4)
Elizabeth Fry (E5)
Elizabeth Fry and the Patchwork Quilts (E6)
First-day schools (E7)
The Great Hunger (E8)
Mary Hughes (E9)
Unemployment (E10)
Friends' Provident Institution (E11)
William Allen (E12)
Derby Gaol (F1)
Trial of Penn and Meade (F2)
Early Friends and slavery (F3)
Daniel Wheeler (F4)
Delegation to the Czar (F5)
Relief Work: British Isles (F6)
Relief of suffering (F7)
Friends' Ambulance Unit (F8)
Reconciliation (F9)
Underground Railway (F10)
William Penn and Pennsylvania (F11)
America and Milford Haven meeting (F12)
Quakers in Dolgellau (F13)
Quakerism in New Zealand (F14)
Workcamps (F15)
Building the institutions of Peace (F16)
Vigils for Peace (F17)
World Conference 1991 (F18)
Friends and the Boer War (F19)
Tasmania (F20)
Friends in Canada (F21)
The Netherlands 1940-1945 (F22)
World Family and Friends (Final Panel)
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| The above article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/quaker_tapestry). 9/5/06 |
Most monumental embroideries are commissioned from professionals; the Quaker tapestry was deliberately the opposite. Two thousand men, women and children from 8 countries worked the panels between 1981 and 1989, many of them stitching the episodes of Quaker history their own meetings and families belonged to — relief work, conscientious objection, the Underground Railway, schools and meeting houses. A shared technique held the multitude together: crewel embroidery in a restricted stitch vocabulary, worked to Anne Wynn-Wilson's designs, so panels made on different continents read as one work. The invented Quaker stitch is emblematic of the project — a practical solution to lettering tight curves, devised by the designer and adopted by every stitcher, a new stitch entering the vocabulary because a community's story needed its words legible.
The Bayeux influence is structural, not decorative quotation. Bayeux showed that embroidery could carry a long, documented history in sequence — panel after panel, image supported by text, minor figures in borders above and below the main action. The Quaker panels adapt that grammar: three horizontal divisions, faces and hands reduced to embroidered outline, clothing filled solidly in the Bayeux laid technique, so that hundreds of historical figures stay readable at a glance. Where Bayeux argued one man's claim to a throne, the Quaker tapestry argues a community's three centuries of witness — peace testimony, prison reform, famine relief and abolition recur across the panels from Fox at Pendle Hill to the vigils for peace — and its permanent home in a working Friends Meeting House at Kendal keeps it in the setting it was made for, rather than behind museum glass.
The panel list itself is an artifact of the method: lettered and numbered sequences — A1 through F22 and beyond — because a work of 77 panels by 2,000 hands had to be administered like a book in production, each chapter assigned, stitched, checked against the shared design and finally assembled. Subjects alternate deliberately between biography, place and testimony, so the tapestry reads at two speeds: a visitor can follow the whole story in an hour, or spend that hour on the single panel of Elizabeth Fry and the patchwork quilts.
Its design was heavily influenced by the Bayeux tapestry, with similar choices: three horizontal divisions within panels, embroidered outlines for faces and hands, and solid infilling of clothing worked in the Bayeux technique. Each panel measures 25 inches wide by 21 inches tall.
Quaker stitch is a new corded stitch invented by Anne Wynn-Wilson for this tapestry, to allow for tight curves on the lettering. The tapestry otherwise uses four historic stitches: split stitch, stem stitch, chain stitch and Peking knot.
The history of Quakerism from the 17th century to the present: George Fox's convincement and travels, Margaret Fell, meeting houses and Quaker schools, conscientious objection, Elizabeth Fry and criminal justice, relief work and the Friends Ambulance Unit, Quaker merchants, scientists and botanists, and the World Conference of 1991, closing with a World Family and Friends final panel.