My eyes were bigger than my walls

I  have stood transfixed by tapestries hanging in the Cluny in Paris, the Walters in Baltimore, and the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.  I have taken a tour through the  Gobelins tapestry manufactory (with its own metro stop) in a language I did not understand just so I could look again at these great works of art.

At the Gobelins, taken over by France in the middle 1600s, I watch modern-day craftsmen and women ply their ancient and honorable trade by the light of day through the windows.  No other illumination is permitted, and these tapestries are woven for the ages, for the hundreds and hundreds of years they may hang in great halls. 

The  first time I saw Les Vendanges at the Cluny, I became lost in a medieval world of viticulture and colors and sensibility I have yet to recover from. There is a little tapestry shop across the street from the Cluny, close by a patisserie that makes the most marvelous chocolate creme tart on earth.  In fact, while eating such a tart in a small, iron-gated garden nearby where I retreated to consider the state of my bank account, I decided to go back into the tapestry shop and bring home a smaller version of Les Vendages, but that is not what I am showing you here. 

Permit me to demonstrate how one's eyes can be bigger than one's house.

Last winter, while visiting Cancun, or rather visiting the international shopping area, I found myself in a vast carpet emporium.  Walking deeper and deeper through cavernous rooms, I came into a small, modestly lighted room at the back and I saw the tapestry of my dreams.  It was 8 feet tall and 15 feet long, and it was of a forest scene of green trees, woodland animals, water ways and falls. If I could have convinced my husband to mortgage the house and build  a gallery for the tapestry, then I could have brought this grand thing home with me.  As it was, I started looking for something that would actually fit my house.

Here it is--my Diana after the hunt, for such it is.     As a modern piece made in the style of the 18thcentury French tapestries, I decided I had to have it. The colors, the canopy, the beautiful tree and those dogs--what was not to like?  Sadly, it remains folded up, and I sit upon it on my office chair because I do not have a wall in my house large enough to display this correctly.  I hauled it outside this afternoon and flung it over a garden wall so I could take this picture for you.  Notice those beautiful dogs, the stream, and handsome lads hauling the canopy above Diana's head.  

What was I thinking, I have more than once asked myself.

Comments

[Ann]

Do you mean like parking the Peugeot in the living room?

[La Moretta]

There is some principle of design (apparently it's something frequently seen in French homes -- I wouldn't know) that involves allowing a room to be dominated by one showstopping piece of furniture, even if it is greatly oversized. It's not harmonious, but it works.

[Ann]

Kris, the piece is just over 7 feet long by 9.5 feet wide. ulp
I really do use the tapestry, folded up, on my desk chair; it gives me just the height I need when I am working on the laptop at my grandfather's desk.

I have a couple of options for hanging the piece, but the space must be a private so as not to strike visitors speechless, and questioning my manners. Large expanses of wall space are already taken by other art, and I must match the tapestry to its surroundings. The tapestry is very beautiful in person.

[Kris]

How large is that anyway? Those reds are gorgeous!