This tapestry was inspired by the medieval tapestries I saw during my travels as a Winston Churchill Fellow and the medieval frescos I saw in Bulgaria. Many I saw depicted various Marys weeping over Christ but it occurred to me one would not be caught weeping in front of the murderers of one’s loved one, but as an accuser one would look back with dignity and a spine of oak. The idea had a personal resonance with me and this is the result, I as the weaver, and also a Mary (my middle name) gets to look out through them. The medieval images are known as the Lamentation of Christ, and I have called this The Lamentation as a nod to the original source.
This tapestry was inspired by the medieval tapestries I saw during my travels as a Winston Churchill Fellow and the medieval frescos I saw in Bulgaria. Many I saw depicted various Marys weeping over Christ but it occurred to me one would not be caught weeping in front of the murderers of one’s loved one, but as an accuser one would look back with dignity and a spine of oak. The idea had a personal resonance with me and this is the result, I as the weaver, and also a Mary (my middle name) gets to look out through them. The medieval images are known as the Lamentation of Christ, and I have called this The Lamentation as a nod to the original source.
This tapestry was inspired by the medieval tapestries I saw during my travels as a Winston Churchill Fellow and the medieval frescos I saw in Bulgaria. Many I saw depicted various Marys weeping over Christ but it occurred to me one would not be caught weeping in front of the murderers of one’s loved one, but as an accuser one would look back with dignity and a spine of oak. The idea had a personal resonance with me and this is the result, I as the weaver, and also a Mary (my middle name) gets to look out through them. The medieval images are known as the Lamentation of Christ, and I have called this The Lamentation as a nod to the original source.
Chrissie Freeth
Handwoven Tapestries
Let Sleeping Dogs Lie
2018
Cotton warp, hand-dyed woollen weft
66cm x 50 cm
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Let Sleeping Dogs Lie was inspired by a line in a letter between two brother's about their sister who had been left in an asylum decades beforehand. This is a figure I've repeatedly turned to in my work, here using the style of the earliest extant tapestries and in part woven to better understand the techniques employed by those weavers.