Quilting or Tapestry or Embroidered Canvas
Apropos the piece on the Church2Community quilt above What Chesham Means to Me, But Who Knows of an Old Building Society Quilt? Your editor is impressed with the tapestry in the Town Hall Council Chamber. It was created by the Chesham Arts Society and presented to the town and people of Chesham in March 1974. A tapestry such as this is properly called an embroidered canvas.
The craftspeople had to choose subjects to represent Chesham including the industries and boots, brushes, breweries and lace-making were selected for the corners. Each picture had to be sketched and these are reproduced in the booklet The Chesham Tapestry, originally priced at 20 pence. A couple of copies are on sale at the Museum.
Work began early in 1972 after the Chairman Mrs Cic Upcott and Craft Organiser for the Chesham Arts Society Mrs Marian Hillen had struggled back from London with a huge roll of canvas which had to be marked, cut into squares and was found to be short measure just to complicate things. Each picture had to be traced, transferred to the canvas where the outlines were adjusted to the squares. More than 50 hours work was needed before each tapestry could be attached to a frame and stitching begun. Experienced needle-workers managed a tapestry in three months or so but most took much longer. Wools had to be matched to brick and roofs and supplies were hard to obtain. In addition Marian Hillen had to organise fund raising to cover the costs.
Buildings included Mineral Cottage, Lord’s Mill Waterside, Church Street, Town Bridge, the Golden Ball public house, Stratford’s Yard (now shortened by the construction of East Street), Lowndes Park, The Broadway, Market Hall (the original demolished in 1964) in Market Square, The Bury, Francis Yard, Vale Farm, and the Hen and Chickens public house. The Chesham Coat of Arms (granted in 1961) is also depicted.
Ten needlewomen and 10 artists worked on the tapestry, eight yards of 27 inch wide canvas was used, 1140 skeins of wool in 130 shades and 518,400 stitches went into the canvas.
It was a tremendous amount of work and organisation spearheaded by Marian Hillen and the result is surely worth it. However perhaps Jan Longhurst should remain in innocent ignorance or she may avoid starting her C2C quilt project.
One of the original needlewomen is Tina Pearce and she tells us, ‘Sadly, just as the tapestry was completed Marian died. She had worked the designs from paintings by local artist Maurice Stratford, who had created them as a record of some of the historic places which were being taken down or no longer in use. I seem to remember that Marion also worked all the borders herself and finished off one of the main pictures too.‘
Posted: 11:25 pm, 25th January, 2012
Related Posts
Embroidered Canvas/ Tapestry in Town Hall, Old Chesham Quilt is Found, Quilt ‘What Chesham Means to Me’, But Who Knows of an Old Building Society Quilt?, Humorous Objections to HS2 – Laughter Gives the Message, Amersham Society On-Line
