The Bayeux Tapestry, Reimagined by Liberty

This Autumn marks an incredibly momentous moment in British history: the Bayeux Tapestry returns to the UK for the first time since its creation nearly 1,000 years ago. Following a historic loan agreement with France, the 70-metre-long textile will be rolled out on view at the British Museum, offering visitors a chance to experience its remarkable depiction of the Norman invasion of 1066 – through 58 scenes, 626 characters and 202 horses, all painstakingly embroidered in wool thread on linen cloth.

A landmark moment in history, craft and textiles, it’s certainly a cause of celebration. And so, as part of a cultural partnership with the British Museum, we’ve marked the occasion with a new collection inspired by this extraordinary piece of history.

This is no recreation, but rather a reimagining. Our renowned design studio studied every inch of its rich narrative, decoding its symbolism, reworking its most iconic motifs, all through a distinctly Liberty lens. A modern tribute to the tapestry’s enduring legacy, the result is a new print design, featured across a limited-edition collection of fabrics, fashion and homeware, now available to purchase at both the British Museum, and here in our London store.

Here, we speak to Mary-Ann Dunkley, Design Director at Liberty to uncover how she and the team approached this significant project.

How did you feel when the news of the project landed in your inbox?
The first thought was: how on earth do we take something with such historic significance, something so enormous, and create something that adequately represents it in a form that our customer would want to buy, use and wear. As designers, the Tapestry is an important part of our education; we’ve all long admired it. So it was a real privilege of a challenge.

Despite the name, the Bayeux Tapestry is an embroidery rather than tapestry. Can you explain the difference?
Tapestries are woven on a loom while embroideries are stitched on top of the fabric. It’s not clear when or why that skewed description came into common use.

It’s a mammoth task disseminating parts of one of the most important textile artefacts around. Where did you start?
We knew we wanted to take inspiration from the Tapestry but to create something new. It was important to be respectful to the original artwork, to maintain the charm. So we started drawing different elements, using different styles and materials, from inks to pens to brushes, experimenting to see what would work best.

We had intensive study sessions with the team at the British Museum to uncover the really significant motifs, and from that we were able to pull out elements like crashing waves, Halley's Comet, mythical creatures, medieval architecture and lots of different animals which we tried to incorporate in our final design.

One thing we discussed at length was about the brutality of the original artwork: it’s about a battle, death, dreadful scenarios of war. And we felt it was important to stay true to that original content, but with an element of charm.

The collection views the tapestry through a Liberty lens. What does that mean?
Our reimagining features elements of the Tapestry hand-drawn in a stylised, expressive line. We wanted to capture the movement and the narrative of the original embroidery, and pay homage to some of its minute details. One of the wonderful things about the Tapestry is the patternation of the stitchwork. If you look closely, the detail is incredible; how they translated decorative detail through stich to show the movement of the flags, or how they used colour to add dimension to clothing. It’s details like these that light us up as designers, so we turned these tiny elements into patterns.

Which is your favourite item from the collection?
I love the fabric. One thing we have never done before is create an edge along the selvedge using one of the borders of the Tapestry, and I’m really excited to see how our creative community of makers is going to use that in their creations, maybe as a detail of a cushion, or the hem of a piece of clothing. But then also the silk scarf because I want one; I knew from the moment we took on the challenge, that was the piece I would want in my wardrobe. It has a lovely circularity to it, and really represents the story of the Tapestry.

The Bayeux Tapestry, reimagined by Liberty is available now at the British Museum, at libertylondon.com and across our flagship store.