Unicorn Tapestry

In the middle of the old city of Leon we came across a small shop selling all things medieval. Not originals (I hope) but replicas and reproductions, art and literature and music. Marvellous.

At the back of the shop I noted a unicorn tapestry - see above. I recognised it - I thought - from our trip to Stirling Castle the year before.

So I asked the man why they had a Scottish tapestry behind the counter.

And I found out all about the medieval tapestry factories - many around Cluny - that produced multiple copies of famous works and sent them all over Europe. The unicorn tapestry I'd spotted was a particularly famous one, part of a sequence (as in Stirling) and much discussed. Eg - from a Web site that sells reproductions today:

This is a tapestry reprodiction of the famous medieval Unicorn In Captivity tapestry. The unicorn represents the beloved tamed. He is tethered to a tree and constrained by a fence, but the chain is not secure and the fence is low enough to leap over: The unicorn could escape if he wished. However his confinement is a happy one, to which the ripe, seed-laden pomegranates in the tree—a medieval symbol of fertility and marriage—testify. Many of the other plants represented here, such as wild orchid, bistort, and thistle, echo this theme of marriage and procreation.

This history of tapestries was all completely new to me - and it was great to hear about it from such an enthusiast.

The trees around Nunhead on Tour 13: Stirling Castle

Stirling Castle, I must admit, was not a place I was very inspired to visit. We first saw the town of Stirling itself on a wet, overcast day a few days earlier. Then I had been more than a little grumpy, and I hadn't been very encouraged by the notion of coming back.

However I really quite enjoyed the castle, when we fiinally got up to it. It is a rather motley collection of different buildings, in different styles, from different periods.





The buildings have been undergoing renovation to varying degrees - and inside a couple of them the feeling is light and airy, as can be seen. There is also a great interest in the local Castle tapestries, particularly the hunting scenes and the captured unicorn. They are quite wonderful. There is an interesting workshop in the grounds.

The shop also sells copies of many these - but I felt the offering was substantially botched. They were trimmed around the edges to such a degree that all of those little medieval and early-modern images - which you often find informing or undermining the central picture - were removed. So they came across as rather unironic and single-minded. A naive view of great art, and quite annoying.




The view from the castle is very impressive - here is a quick shot snatched through a window.