Description

Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Book in excellent unread/unused condition. See images. Fantastic book.

About the book >.>.> The collection includes well-known masterpieces such as the iconic fifteenth- century millefleur Knight with the Arms of Jean de Daillon at Montacute and the breathtaking eighteenth-century Gobelins tapestry room at Osterley; elsewhere we find tapestries that were displayed in a royal palace (at Knole) and grand ambassadorial gifts (at Blickling). But thanks to their unique history the National Trust’s holdings have many other hidden stories to tell. The tapestries survive in over forty different properties across England and Wales. Unlike a museum col- lection where objects have been chosen at a certain point in time for their art- istic merit or historical interest they represent the tastes and preoccupations of successive generations of collectors from the sixteenth century to the twentieth. In many cases surviving archival documents allow us to reconstruct not only their original acquisition and display but changes in use over centuries. We can thus piece together a new history of the tapestry medium which encompasses the entire ‘social lives of the objects taking in manufacture purchase display. restoration and alteration as well as the complex histories of nineteenth- and twentieth-century collecting. (MP)