4' x 5'10" European Scenery Tapestry | Wool and Silk | Green and Rust

A 4' x 5'10" panel of European weaving in wool and silk, worked flat with no pile, showing a wooded park seen through a screen of branches. Birds sit in the canopy, a swan rests on the water at the right, and a waterfall drops behind the trees in the middle distance. The picture runs to the edge of the field and is framed by a flowering border on a camel ground, with the whole panel bound in a dark charcoal tape. At accent size, it hangs as easily as it lies.

The scene

Two heavy trunks lean in from the left and right of this rectangular panel and their branches meet across the top, leaving an opening of pale sky at the centre. Behind that gap sits a low stone balustrade and a bridge, with water falling in white threads through the foliage. In the foreground the ground rises in bare earth and exposed roots, planted with broad ribbed leaves and grasses. Three birds carry the narrative: one orange and red, perched high in the leaves at the upper left, and two more on the grass bank by the water, one with its wings spread. The swan floats below a brick retaining wall among dark ivy. The border is a continuous run of open roses, buds, fruit and curling acanthus on a soft camel ground, separated from the field by a thin gold line.

The colour

The field is built almost entirely from green, from near black in the shaded oak leaves through olive and moss to a pale yellow green where the light catches the canopy. Against that, the perched bird and the border flowers carry the rust, a warm orange that shades into red on the wing and the crest. The tree trunks, the earth bank and the border ground are brown, from camel to a deep bark tone. Cream in the sky and the swan, slate blue in the water and a few points of madder red in the border keep the scene from settling into one temperature. The charcoal outer binding closes the whole thing down neatly.

The making

The pile row records a flat tapestry weave in wool and silk, and the surface is smooth to the point of being cloth rather than carpet, with the silk picking up light in the sky and the swan's breast. The reverse shows the loose weft ends left hanging where each colour was worked in, which is normal for tapestry of this kind and is usually hidden by a lining when the panel is hung. The origin is given as European and the design as Scenery. The tapestry is recorded as recent and unused, and its condition as perfect.