On a productive day, Cecilia Blomberg, weaver-in-residence at Stirling Castle in Scotland, is able to expand her reproduction of the series of seven famous “Hunt of the Unicorn” tapestries by a few inches. In her lecture at the University on Monday, she said this makes for an incredibly sluggish sense of progress because the size of one full tapestry measures approximately 10 feet by 10 feet.
Working with five other weavers, she has been employed to create near-perfect replicas of the originals to hang in Stirling Castle. The original “Hunt of the Unicorn” is currently on display at a division of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
The Hunt of the Unicorn is a series of seven elaborate tapestries depicting a nobleman’s hunting party pursuing, catching and ultimately killing a pearl-white unicorn. The work was originally owned by James V, King of Scots and Queen Mary of Guise and was displayed in the queen’s chambers in Stirling Castle, located in central Scotland.
Blomberg showed a series of slides to show the complex detail of the original tapestries, which are believed to have been produced in the 16th century in Brussels.
“The cost of one tapestry would have been the same as a battleship,” Blomberg said.
Blomberg said that her team works seven hour shifts, six days a week on a immense loom to weave the fabrics of the tapestry. Each weaver works on a separate section of the tapestry and eventually joins them to form the main piece.
“It’s a very slow process weaving this,” she said. “We try to make it look like it’s been done by one hand.”
She estimates that the single tapestry her team started in March 2004 will not be completed until July 2007. The entire project to reproduce the full set started in 2001 and is planned to be completed in 2013.
“You go a little crazy working on this,” Blomberg said, adding that the tapestries regularly frequent her dreams.
From staring day after day at the same scene, her teammates and her have gotten into the habit of naming and assigning characteristics to the various people in the tapestry. One of her attributed characters, “Rotten Randy,” is a sinister-looking man who is prominently shown stabbing the unicorn in the sixth tapestry.
“But he’s not entirely a bad guy,” said Blomberg, pointing out that Rotten Randy is wearing two hats. “You could just see his mother telling to bring an extra hat!”
Prior to working at Stirling Castle, Blomberg worked as a successful artist in the U.S. and exhibited her work nationally and internationally. She said she felt very lucky as an artist to have a stable job and paycheck.
“Any job opening for an artist is incredible,” Blomberg said. “But an opening for tapestry weaving? That’s unheard of.”