The tapestry<\/a> may have been commissioned by Bishop Odo<\/a> of Bayeux, possibly as a gift for William the Conqueror, his half brother. It could have been displayed in the refectory of a monastery, or draped magisterially at a palace or church of immense political power.<\/p>\n There is evidence of other vast, but now lost, early medieval tapestries. A 12th-century chronicle known as the Liber Eliensis<\/em> tells of a tapestry donated to Ely Abbey by \u00c6ffl\u00e6d<\/a>, formidable widow of Byrhtnoth<\/a>, the ealdorman (regional governor) of Essex who died at the Battle of Maldon in 991.<\/p>\n But nothing survives that compares with the Bayeux tapestry. The inventory of Bayeux cathedral is where it emerges into the historical record, but this was written in 1476 \u2013 around 400 years after the last stitches were embroidered. No one knows how it made its way to Bayeux. <\/p>\n What we do know is that this remarkable early medieval tapestry occupies a unique position in European history, culture and politics. It continues to re-emerge as an object that inspires important creative, artistic and political acts in the 20th and 21st centuries. <\/p>\n Unsurprisingly, perhaps, we should look to the Victorian period<\/a> \u2013 and, perhaps more surprisingly, to Staffordshire. In the mid-1880s, Elizabeth Wardle<\/a>, a founder and superintendent of the Leek Embroidery Society and highly learned and skilled artisan, made a replica of the tapestry in collaboration with around 35 needlewomen.<\/p>\n She visited Bayeux, consulted facsimiles held by the Victoria & Albert Museum, and led her collective so that this new Bayeux tapestry could be exhibited in June 1886.<\/p>\n In a connection with the original embroidery, Wardle\u2019s replica would also leave England, although this time to tour the United States. In 1895, the replica was bought by a former mayor of Reading and is now displayed in Reading Museum<\/a>.<\/p>\n In 1944, the American artist and designer Rea Irvin<\/a> reworked the tapestry to commemorate the D-Day landings<\/a> for the cover of the New Yorker magazine. In the opening scene of Irvin\u2019s reimagining, Edward the Confessor and Harold become King George VI, Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt. Troops travel by plane and tank rather than boat and horse. A swastika flies from a castle\u2019s tower. <\/p>\n Irvin\u2019s re-envisioning recreated the tapestry to accentuate the historical significance of D-Day. It engaged with the tapestry\u2019s interest in morality to reflect on the politics of the second world war, the horror of Nazism, and the heroics of the Allied troops. <\/p>\n The sheer ubiquity of the Bayeux tapestry was cemented from the second half of the 20th century, featuring in films as diverse as Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971), Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991) and Shrek the Third (2007). Now, the embroidery has a strange familiarity \u2013 no doubt known to millions in one form or another \u2013 and is rightly celebrated as a piece of cultural heritage. <\/p>\n Its status as cultural icon, however, threatens to disguise its complexities. The difficulties of the tapestry \u2013 making sense of the sometimes bawdy and often violent scenes within its margins, for example \u2013 might also be said to be an invitation to contemporary artists and thinkers to respond.<\/p>\n Artist Fiona Banner\u2019s installation 1066, first exhibited in 2010<\/a>, is what she calls a \u201cstill film\u201d<\/a> \u2013 a textual account of an image written on gallery walls, which defamiliarises the tapestry and asks viewers to try to see it with fresh eyes. <\/p>\n Politics is central to the tapestry\u2019s origin, story and history. As a document of conquest, for some it forms part of the myth known as \u201cThe Norman Yoke\u201d<\/a>, bound up in ideas of English exceptionalism.<\/p>\n This may explain why Reform UK leader Nigel Farage<\/a> wore a tie decorated with scenes from the Bayeux tapestry so often in the years running up to the Brexit referendum. At the time, he said it was a reminder \u201cof the last time we were invaded and taken over\u201d. <\/p>\n Similarly, it may be why the Sun newspaper commemorated the UK\u2019s departure from the EU by making its own Brexit-inspired version, the \u201cBye-EU tapestry\u201d<\/a>. <\/p>\n There is only one Bayeux tapestry. Or perhaps we should say there is only one medieval Bayeux tapestry, because for the last couple of centuries, this wonder of medieval art has demanded creative and cultural responses, and new Bayeux tapestries have emerged.<\/p>\nWhere does its modern history begin?<\/h2>\n
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\n Bayeux Museum<\/a><\/span>
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