Autumn, Harvest Time And Festive Holidays In Tapestries

By Author: Alla Marinow
Total Articles: 8
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The cold air signals approaching winter. Colors surround us, we snuggle in our sweaters, and our shopping carts start looking like a harvest table full of pumpkins, squash, big leafy vegetables, potatoes and lots of warming comfort foods.

Autumn is the gateway to festivals, Thanksgiving and the religious holidays that follow in the ensuing winter months. Throughout the centuries all have been expressed in tapestries. From the early medieval times, wine harvest and the preparation of wine and the associated festivities have been expressed in multiple hand woven tapestries, the most famous of course being The Vintage – which was woven in the 14th century and now hangs in the Cluny Museum in Paris. Other tapestries depicting harvests abound throughout the medieval period.

By the 16th century, we start to experience the lives of both peasants and the nobility celebrating the autumn and harvest time. With the summer crop coming to fruition in October or November, it was a natural time for the people to let loose and have bacchanalian festivals, where ...
... wine flowed and food was plentiful. Expressed in tapestries, it was a time of thanksgiving for a good crop that would see the person through the long cold winter months. Even during times that were lean, a gathering and sharing of food was a natural human expression of the joint difficult times that lay ahead for everyone. Wall tapestries give us a look into the past, not so different from our current times. In earlier times, the constant concern was for the crops – whether it was a good balanced year of rain, sun and healthy harvests. These plentiful times were expressed in tapestries by ornate borders bearing fruit, flowers, and vegetables, with the main theme of the wall hanging tapestry being a festive scene or a harvest of plenty. Difficult times were expressed in tapestries with sparse landscape, battle scenes of war, or scenes from the bible showing death and destruction.

Today, in our difficult times, we worry about our jobs and money; we play, and celebrate our Thanksgiving and holidays. Family and festivities are no different than they were 500 years ago. Today, we purchase tapestries for our walls to warm the environment for the holiday season. Hand woven tapestries decorate blank walls and bring the outdoors in. It is our way of celebrating harvest, food, family and friends. European tapestries filled with color, bountiful harvests and life abounding remind us of our own lives – the joys, sorrows, happiness, difficulties etc. Humanity through the ages is the same; our present is connected to our past.

Bringing a bit of sunshine into our lives, by decorating our walls with tapestries and sharing the joy of the thanksgiving season followed by the winter religious holidays is our way of connecting, and sharing. Large tapestries due to their size can fill an enormous wall space very quickly and efficiently. Tapestries also have a sound deadening quality that softens hard surface sounds. Wall hanging tapestries not only bring the outdoors in, create a warm environment to live in, but have the added benefits of reducing the echo effect of hard surface sounds in any home. Tapestries are always the right decorating choice!