Manuscript inspiration
Wednesday, June 16, 2010 at 10:43AM I was surfing the internet this morning to find an image of Mary Magdalene for a project associated with my professional life, and I was reminded of the utter beauty of manuscript illuminations and how well they would translate into hooked rugs as borders and motifs. Take a look at some of these:
I also found this fascinating website where there are lots of vintage printables collected.
As I was surfing, I ran across someone interesting. In the mid-1800s, William Morris founded a design company that produced high quality textiles and tapestries (read more HERE). He adored medieval art and manuscripts, and thought "modern" art was only about mass production. So he based his company's designs on medieval images and produced some of the world's most outstanding and creative decorative art that helped to spawn the arts and crafts movement in the Victorian era. As I browsed his work, I was surprised to discover how his designs appear to have influenced rug hookers in the late 1800s and early 1900s.
Here are some of his works which I show from The Tapestry House website which sells reproductions of his textiles.
He sometimes included text on his tapestries. One of them that caught my attention were the words: "Honour the Women, they broid and weave heavenly roses into earthly life." It is called Ehret die frauen (Honor the Women):
