It has been a month since Bob and I returned from France. We are hurtling through time, getting ready for our winter living onboard, and I am attempting to do something textile-y with every day I have left on land! So, in some ways it feels like our trip to France happened about 6 months ago! In other ways I feel like I’ve just returned.

A friend of mine alerted me to the fact that Paris has wonderful shops for notions and fabrics. I had experienced a bit of that two years ago, when I found a fabric shop in Fort de France, Martinique. I couldn’t wait to see what a shop full of buttons, ribbons, and trims might offer–in Paris!

My friend had mentioned Ulta Mod, which has two shops on opposite sides of the street on Rue de Choiseul. It might be the oldest haberdashery in Paris since it opened in 1832.

Rebecca Devaney has some wonderful descriptions of the history of Ulta Mod as well as its current offerings in the newer store–and great photos! You really should take a look at all the great interior shots of the store on Devaney’s website. I think it vies with French boulangeries as a compelling reason to visit Paris! While I was there, a woman had her tweed coat spread out on a counter and was choosing new buttons. I thought the buttons that were already on the coat were quite nice! I don’t think I would have considered changing them, but then I am not French, let alone Parisienne. This woman, and the saleswoman waiting on her, clearly understood that the coat could be so much better with new buttons! How they got through the wall of buttons to make a choice was mind boggling.

I got lost in the section of trims. I was thinking of braiding as I looked through bins and bins of offerings. There had to be about a 100 color choices of just one type of cording that caught my eye. As often happens to me when there is too much choice, I couldn’t pick anything! My loss….

I had done a bit of internet searching ahead of time and wanted to visit Maison Sajou. Oh my! This is an embroidery shop where every project, every spool of thread, package of needles, and every fabric on display made my heart race. I don’t even do embroidery anymore, but I wanted everything in this shop! Actually, I wanted to live here.

Now I plan to give embroidery another whirl. It’s certainly an easy thing to take onboard for the winter. After much deliberation, and after putting various spools of linen embroidery thread and some cute packages of embroidery needles in my cart, I added this project kit. Tres adorable!

I think I missed a great opportunity to see some fabric shops in Paris. We were leaving the Cathedrale Montmartre, walking down a street of fabric shops, all closing for the day. I have no idea if this is the hotbed of French fabric shops since I didn’t get to check them. On another day, I went searching for a fabric shop I’d found online in the area where we were staying, the 11th arrondissement. I found a Japanese fabric shop called Jhin.

Of course I envisioned returning home with French fabric, perhaps outdoing the beautiful linen print I found in Martinique. But fate took me to Jhin and I came home with two beautiful Japanese prints for me, and another two for a friend. Serendipity can be so much fun!

I’ve begun embroidering the cute little tote from Sajou. It’s a restful way to spend time–perfect for days in tropical harbors in the Caribbean. I’ll be there soon.

The most famous tapestry in the Western world is not, in fact a tapestry, but that does not diminish its incredible workmanship or its place in history. I’m referring to the Bayeux tapestry. A visit to Bayeux to see this work was high on my list of things must-dos while in France last month. (It was 2nd only to seeing the Lady and the Unicorn.) It remains in excellent condition after almost 1,000 years. I don’t think it’s ever been stored away in an old barn as many woven tapestries have been, so it is in remarkable condition. At the museum in Bayeux, where it is housed, you can walk along the length of this epic embroidered tale, and marvel. I marveled that the background was entirely handspun and handwoven. I marveled that all the embroidery threads were handspun and hand dyed. I thought about those nuns who sat together and wielded their needles one thousand years ago. In some fundamental ways we are so similar to those women. Nihil novi sub sol.

The museum in Bayeux has done such a clever job of displaying the tapestry that I never even missed the fact that I could not take photos. The “tapestry” is displayed in a dimly lit glass case that flows in a large circle in the center of a darkened gallery. Everyone is given headphones to listen to an audio description of the work and the story of the Norman Conquest of England in 1066. Like everyone else, I was compelled to keep up with the narrator so that I could see the bits of the story illustrated in the embroidered piece, as well as taking some time to enjoy the lovely colors of the dyed threads and examine the stitches.

The piece is 224 feet long. It tells the story of the Conquest, from King Edward’s death, through the envoy that went to France to alert William of Normandy that he was the chosen successor to Edward, to cousin (or some kind of relative) Harold usurping the English throne for himself, through William’s amassing troops and building ships to sail to England and claim his place. It’s intriguing to ‘read’ this story in the imagery of the embroidery. It’s hard to pick any part of the piece that stands out above the rest. The building of ships caught my eye, with all the details of cutting down trees and the depiction of the tools used for shaping the stem and the planks for the boats. I think this was part of the work that captured Bob’s attention.

The scenes of the ships sailing across the channel made me realize how much I’d enjoy weaving the various men onboard and the colorful sails. A few years ago, one of the Wednesday Groupers decided to weave a small section of the Bayeux tapestry as woven tapestry. I totally understand. I’m feeling pulled to weave those ships under sail. I hope the nuns enjoyed their creative interpretations as they stitched.

The battle scenes were equally well executed, and I found the depiction of horses in battle quite moving.

Standing in the presence of something so well preserved and so beautifully made is quite emotional. It’s impossible not to think of the women who made this piece, the men who commissioned it, the men who lived the story being told. It’s impossible to ignore the long projection of time that brought us to the 21st century, how our native tongue is now a mix of Norman French and Saxon and Old Norse, how our way governing spread through the world through England’s vast expansion of colonies. Here is one story, told at the beginning of this long history of evolution and progress of the English language and English justice, worked in embroidery by women.

A Short Tour of the Normandy Coast

Normandy is a beautiful area of France, known for cheese, for apples and pears and Calvados, for damp foggy days along the shore.

We were quite lucky to have clear, dry days while we were there. The beaches were stunning, but it was easy to imagine how difficult that D-day landing was over 75 years ago, on a far less beautiful day. That was another memorable part of our trip that lies outside the subject of my post. Still, after seeing the amount of work in the Bayeux tapestry, telling a 1,000 year old story, I couldn’t help but notice the similarities in the various battles fought along the same coastline, during the past 10 centuries.

We ate cheese each day, and each day we sampled some apple cider and a few times some Calvados. My compulsion to make lists of must-sees/must-dos included having sole Normandie. I couldn’t wait to have the same meal that Julia Child had on her arrival in France so many years ago. I was shocked that I could not find it on any menu in Bayeux, Honfleur, or Etretat! That was another little disappointment, but the cheeses surely made up for not it…and the bread!

In spite of the fact that the coastal towns along the Normandy shore are famously scenic, I found Bayeux to be my favorite. It may have been the light. We were blessed with dry, clear days.

The streets of Bayeux are festooned with colorful balloon type decorations, and many shop windows have been painted with images and slogans of gratitude for saving French culture during WWII. There are French, British, Canadian and US flags everywhere, and even a few German flags.

We stayed just outside Bayeux in a farmstay, and it was an excellent choice. This place is as charming as a fairy tale, and we walked along a country road at the edge of several farms and into a tiny nearby village.

From Bayeux, we traveled north to Honfleur and Etretat. Honfleur is incredibly scenic as touristy, and Bob enjoyed a day of looking at boats. I think he took about 1,000 photos. For lunch we sat under one of those umbrellas to the left of this photo.

If I were to start writing about the gardens….well, it would be a deep rabbit hole. Gardens, window boxes, and florists were so lush everywhere we traveled. The roses I saw everywhere were as perfect as roses in June in New England. Can I limit myself to one photo? Maybe….just for this post.

I hope I never forget the view of the shoreline in Etretat, seeing the very view that Monet painted on several occasions. It made me realize how fluid time is, that I could stand in the same spot that someone immortalized in art a century (or 10 centuries) before I stood in that very place.

We could even see this memorable landmark from the tiny balcony of our room at one of the highest points in town.

We celebrated Melody’s birthday in Etretat and then began our journey back to Paris, stopping in Rouen and Giverny.

I think I need a post about the bounty of French markets’ fresh vegetables and fruit, perhaps touching briefly on gardens which of course includes Giverny, and all the lace I saw throughout Normandy. Next time…

This has been an olympically busy week, and all of it was unexpected. We had an unplanned visit from Bob’s brother at the beginning of the week, which made my mother in law’s 90th birthday truly special. Boating friends have arrived via sailboat midweek, and we want to spend time with them. Bob is up to his chin provisioning our boat Pandora for his departure next week for points south, leading down to Antigua in the Caribbean. This is a giant hurdle for us each year, because all our clothing, all my textile projects, and all our food staples have to get onboard before Bob sets sail. We will not be able to ship any of these items, or take that much stuff on a plane!

And to top off a week of fun but unexpected pleasures (read hectic), I got an email about a presentation at Yale Art Gallery that I simply had to attend, no matter how much schedule rearranging it necessitated!

I expected to spend the next two blog posts sharing some textile-y experiences I enjoyed in France, but I need to interrupt that program to talk about last night’s presentation at Yale. The speaker was Jenny Balfour-Paul! I certainly was not going to miss a chance to meet this fascinating woman who has done so much research into the world cultures that have a long history of dyeing with indigo. Two years ago, my local weaving group read her most recent book Deeper than Indigo and then spent our September meeting discussing the book. Indigo is such a fascinating subject! How did anyone ever figure out how to extract that wonderful blue from the plant? It seems like alchemy, especially since the dye itself is not blue, and when you pull your yarn or fabric from the dye vat, it does not turn blue for several seconds. It starts yellow and goes deep green before finally turning blue. It’s quite a magical experience, and I can imagine how ancient cultures who had no knowledge of the chemistry involved, must have marveled at this mysterious process. The Indians and Japanese always prayed to their indigo god before beginning a dye session, and they always gave thanks to that god at the end.

Jenny Balfour Paul has been researching indigo for over 40 years. If I wrote about all I learned about her last night, this post would be far more than a little digression. She is a living treasure on the history of indigo, and she has traveled all the parts of the world where indigo dyeing was done in ancient times, and the parts of the world where indigo dyeing was big business during the colonial expansion era of the Western world. Recently, she’s been involved in projects for creating textiles with less impact on our fragile ecological system. She will be talking about that on Monday, next week, at the Explorers’ Club in Manhattan. You can read about the project here. Her first exploration, 40 years ago, was to the Middle East, where traditional dyeing techniques were fading into obscurity. She wanted to record those techniques in order to preserve them. Considering the language barrier between her and these remote tribes, she mostly gained knowledge of their dyeing process by watching them. This included seeing the plants grown in the fields, harvesting, and the complex process of turning plant into dye. After the Middle East and North Africa, her research has taken her to the Far East, to remote parts of China, to remote parts of both Africa and India, to the South America and the tropical islands where Western ventures into mass production of shippable dye stuffs took place during the colonial period. One of the most fascinating projects she’s working on is using indigo cakes that were recovered from a shipwreck in the Marquesa islands in the late 17th c. She let us all hold one of the indigo cakes, and it looked brand new, even after being submerged for centuries.

For her presentation last night, Jenny draped the podium in beautiful indigo fabrics

She wore a stunning outfit of indigo dyed fabrics. Her beautiful dress was dyed by her first teacher who set her on the path of researching the dyeing traditions of other cultures. The colors in my photo are quite ‘off’ due to the stage lighting. Her silk scarf is really a deep blue touched with subtle shades of green. Her beautifully printed dress fabric is what her teacher dyed. It has a lot of green in it, and also tan from where it was tied to create rows of resist. It is also patterned with tiny dots where her teacher used a wooden block with nails, dipped in wax, to add resist to the fabric (like batik) before dyeing.

I was thoroughly enchanted with Jenny Balfour Paul, both as a dedicated researcher and as someone who was refreshingly passionate about her subject. Her enthusiasm is contagious! When I spoke to her after the presentation I admitted my lack of confidence in dyeing, especially with indigo. I’ve had some successes, but only using someone else’s dyebath. I’ve been fortunate during my time in Connecticut to have other guild members share their indigo vats me. Last night Jenny gave me a bit more confidence to try again to make my own vat. She recommended the indigo kit from Maiwa. I’m on it!

And so goes a short digression. Like many things, this is going to send me down a deep rabbit hole. But I’m looking forward to gaining some confidence in dyeing with indigo. I wonder what Bob would think of that as a project onboard this winter. Hmmmm….

The tapestry class I’m teaching started earlier this week, and since we are studying traditional Gobelins style techniques, I can’t get the “Lady and the Unicorn” off my mind. I started reading the book I bought at the museum, which also brings up bits of info that are filed deeply in my brain from my college years–a long, long time ago at this point. I enjoyed studying the MIddle Ages in college, in between the classes I needed for my majors.

During the Middle Ages a popular literary form was the bestiary, in which stories about real and imaginary animals were told in order to convey moral concepts. The unicorn featured often in these tales, where it represented two opposing sides of the same idea: ideas of purity, virginity, and Christian virtues, as well as less pure concepts of sexual desire and attractions, giving into one’s senses. At this time in history the senses were considered to be base, in need of control by the higher call of duty and control of one’s desires. There are descriptions of a 6th sense, the heart or the soul, an inner compass that could give guidance to the lower senses of touch, taste, sight, smell and hearing. So, naturally, many scholars have weighed in on what that might mean to the purpose of the story in the six tapestries of the ‘Lady and the Unicorn.’ After 500 years, there are still so many disagreements–and unknowns.

I was intrigued to learn that the tapestries were repaired in the late 19th c., after being acquired by the Cluny Museum, and that the woven areas near the bottom of certain pieces have faded dramatically from the rich red to a greyish pink. The upper areas that are still original have surely faded some, but are still a deep madder red. What was used on the repaired areas? Could it have been the recently developed aniline dyes? Can I get an answer on this? Do you see the badly faded area at the bottom of “Hearing?”

I find the photos is in the book I bought so inspiring! The facial expressions on the woman and her lady in waiting, their wonderful hairstyles, their jewelry, their clothing!–I can look and look and still find more that amazes me. The animals and flowers are endlessly entertaining, aren’t they? A few years ago, when I still lived near the Cloisters, I took a tour with a docent who focused on the gardens there and what the plants were used for edibly and medicinally, and in folkore . She told us stories about what strengths various plants were believed to lend to the body if eaten, or applied in some way. At the end of the tour, the docent took us to the gallery with the “Hunt for the Unicorn” to show us many of the same plants depicted in the millefleur: foxglove, carnations, roses, lilies, and plenty of others. How amazing that these plants were so well portrayed 500 years ago. Just writing about this memory makes me want to weave!

At the moment it’s the organ and the woven rug in “Hearing” that make me think this is the best tapestry I’ve ever seen. How many weavers sat side by side to work on this? Did more than one weaver work on the organ pipes which are spot-on brilliant? That rug is a show stopper too, not to mention the Lady and her maid. Whatever these weavers made in wages, it was not enough!

So now I’ll skip ahead to a couple of 20th c. tapestries that evoke these medieval masterpieces with a modern sensibility. We weavers still do not make reasonable wages. Some things never change.

Archie Brennan was my teacher for about a dozen years, and actually he still is. There will always be something to learn from him as long as there are images of his work available and memories of his terrific advice. Like medieval tapestries, the more you look the more there is to see.

While in Paris, Bob and I visited the address, 31 Rue de Seine, near and dear to my heart. It’s been a well known address over the decades of the past century and a half. First, it’s known as the residence of George Sands (1804-1876), who happened to write about the “Lady and the Unicorn,” as well as set her novel Jeanne in the Boussac castle, where the tapestries lived during that time period. Fast forward a few years, and Raymond Duncan (brother to Isadora) lived at this address where he ran a sort of commune for art students. Archie found himself there in the early 1950s, weaving tapestries for Raymond. I have no idea where Archie’s work there may have gone.

You can’t imagine how it made my day to visit this spot! We went into the art gallery next door (to the right in the photo, Hourde Charles-Wesley) to ask about the current owners of #31. The gallery assistant said the gallery has a key that opens those big blue doors to the courtyard. Archie has written about that courtyard, where Duncan made large sculptures. I’ve often felt that I could picture it based on Archie’s descriptions (and one tiny photo I found online years ago). And voila! I saw it for real.

The gallery assistant told us that recently the owners found some artwork in the basement. She didn’t say what–Raymond Duncan’s sculptures? Archie’s tapestries? I doubt it, but something may have been left from that time period, and, if so, likely it would be work of some of the students. Archie felt that Duncan’s work would not stand the test of time. Most of the residents of the commune were students, mostly wealthy American and Japanese women who found it trendy to live in a Bohemian setting and study under Duncan. Archie was one of a few artists who were paid to work there. Interesting times.

This piece happened to be in the courtyard. I have no idea if it’s one of the pieces found in the basement. I have a lot of questions, and luckily I now have a contact in the gallery next door!

Recounting these days in Paris: the disappointment at not seeing “The Lady and the Unicorn,” the excitement of getting past those big blue doors at 31 Rue de Seine, piecing things together from my (almost) 20 years of working in tapestry, revisiting medieval history; well, it’s been memorable for me. Tapestries, Paris, 500 years apart. It was a moment.