Archbishop Stigand stands with his hands outstretched and an odd little smile on his face. He's watching King Harold receive a sceptre and orb, seated on a throne, towering over the men gathered below him. Nobody knows exactly what that smile means. Was Stigand pleased? Amused? In on some joke lost to the eleventh century? The Bayeux Tapestry gives no explanation, and eight hundred years later, we're still trying to work it out.
Mia Hansson stitches a scenic recreation of the Bayeux Tapestry
That ambiguity sits at the heart of our latest How To in Selvedge Issue 132, Legacy. It's a reinterpretation of this coronation scene adapted from Mia Hansson's new book Embroider the Bayeux Tapestry (Search Press). Hansson simplifies the composition, removing the architectural backdrop and the Latin text, and leaves the figures and their gestures to do the storytelling. Stripped back this way, small oddities become impossible to ignore: Stigand's expression, the missing brooch pin at one man's shoulder, the single cloak on the tapestry lined in a different colour to its front. Whether these were deliberate choices or slips of the needle, working through the stitches yourself is the closest we can get to an answer.
Template image for Mia Hansson's recreation of King Harold’s coronation.
The original tapestry is, despite its name, an embroidery rather than a woven tapestry at all. Its ground is nine uneven lengths of bleached linen, stitched over with coloured woollen thread dyed using madder, weld, and woad, alongside a mysterious brown colourant nobody has fully identified. The palette doesn't follow nature. Horses appear green, hair turns blue, and colour seems to have been chosen for balance across the frieze rather than accuracy. Stem stitch, split stitch, and chain stitch build the outlines, filled in with laid and couched work, a technique that lets large areas of colour sit flat and even across the linen.
Bayeux Tapestry © La Fabrique de patrimoines en Normandie, Antoine Cazin
The tapestry's makers remain just as elusive as Stigand's smile. No signature survives, and understanding of who embroidered it relies on historical guesswork. Records name skilled women such as Leofgyth of Knook, who produced gold embroidery for the king and queen, and Æthelswith of Coveney, thought to have run a training workshop for girls. Whether any of them touched this particular tapestry is unknown, but their existence points to organised, professional needlework, most likely carried out by women working to a coordinated standard.
Bayeux Tapestry © La Fabrique de patrimoines en Normandie, Antoine Cazin
This autumn offers a rare chance to look Stigand in the eye yourself. The Bayeux Tapestry arrives at the British Museum on 10 September, shown flat and in a continuous length for the first time in memory. London Textile Month brings two further ways in. At the Museum of the Home, an Object Study session runs from Tuesday 8 to Saturday 12 September, offering a behind-the-scenes look at the museum's own Bayeux-inspired textile panel. And on Tuesday 15 September, the Textile Society's Pat Frost leads a private tour of the 19th-century Leek School reproduction at Reading Museum, stitched by Victorian embroiderers determined to bring the story home.
For the full embroidery pattern, CLICK HERE, and decide for yourself what that smile is hiding!
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Further Information:
Discover more about the Bayeux Tapestry at the following events:
London Textile Month:
British Museum
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Image Credits:
Lead: King Harold’s coronation, a reinterpretation of the Bayeux Tapestry by Mia Hansson
All further images as credited in captions.