Scotland, stitch by stitch

    Last year I posted briefly about the ambitious embroidery project The Great Tapestry of Scotland - stitching the story of Scotland from pre-history to modern times. Lindsay and Dark Puss asked back then which events would be included in the work, and here is a list of the subjects to be depicted in the panels.

    

    The project statistics are worth noting, too: 50,000 sewing hours, 49,000 metres of yarn, over 150 separate panels, and the finished piece - it's due to be completed next summer - will be the biggest tapestry in the world (the Bayeux is as nothing in comparison!).

    Speaking of the Bayeux tapestry, it comes into a fascinating plot strand in Jane Rusbridge's excellent novel Rook, which I was talking about yesterday. The book's setting, the south coast village of Bosham, appears in the tapestry itself, and its history as recorded there affects the stories of Jane's present day characters. This leads me to wonder whether some novelist of the future will use The Great Tapestry of Scotland as material for the page, fashioning a drama, perhaps, from stitches of coloured wool.

Comments

[MelD]

That is going to be a fantastic work of art - just the artwork is so beautiful and I'm imagining those designs stitched up: mindbogglingly amazing!
I was interested to find out the size - 100x50 cm for each panel is enormous. I do hope it goes on show and I can get to see it in real life with time to browse the enormity of the project.
And yes, I do think it will feature in a story because I think anyone who sees it is going to be awestruck and impressed and will need to find a way of putting that feeling into some kind of context - why not a book?!
Thanks for pointing this project out - I might never have known, otherwise.

[Cornflower]

You're welcome, Mel. I'm looking forward to seeing the finished work, and I hope it will go on tour - that's the plan, according to the website.

[Dark Puss]

Thank you for the link, although everyone will have their own favourite omissions from the list I was sorry to see that yet again one of the really groundbreaking scientists, James Clerk Maxwell, was not included. Scotland's Newton or Einstein for sure! Why are the Scots so reticent about Maxwell I wonder? Let me end with a quotation from Einstein about the impact of Maxwell

"Since Maxwell's time, physical reality has been thought of as represented by continuous fields, and not capable of any mechanical interpretation. This change in the conception of reality is the most profound and the most fruitful that physics has experienced since the time of Newton"