New World Tapestry

The New World Tapestry was for a time the largest stitched embroidery in the world, larger than the Bayeux Tapestry. It depicts English colonisation attempts in Newfoundland, North America, the Guyanas and Bermuda between the years 1583 and 1642, when the English Civil War began.

Work began on the tapestry in 1980 and continued for twenty years. The tapestry's home was the British Empire & Commonwealth Museum in the original 1840s terminal station designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel near the modern Bristol Temple Meads railway station in central Bristol, England. This museum has now closed and the collections are cared for by Bristol Museums, Galleries & Archives. The tapestry and the rest of the collections are in storage.

The New World Tapestry, which in its entirety measures 267 ft × 4 ft (81.3 × 1.2 m), consists of twenty-four panels, each of which depicts the narrative of a particular phase in the period between 1583 and 1642.

Each panel measures 11 × 4 ft (3.4 × 1.2 m).

The figures of the tapestry are rendered in an unmistakably modern, cartoon-like style, but it also follows in the tradition of Tudor and Jacobean canvas work embroidery. The panels are worked in gobelin stitch which entirely covers the ground, and along with pictures of the main scenes of the story, the panels also feature birds, animals, flowers and insects all beautifully worked in bold colours.

  (1)

  (2)

  (3)

...
Wikipedia