Conservation work on tapestries wins award

The National Trust has received the Europa Nostra Award for its work to conserve the Gideon Tapestries at Hardwick Hall in Derbyshire. The conservation of the tapestries were sewn by hand using traditional sewing and stitching techniques, which was praised for “exemplifying the National Trust's commitment to preservation”.

The winners were selected from 206 eligible applications to this year's Awards submitted by organisations and individuals from 38 European countries.

The tapestries have been in the Long Gallery of Hardwick Hall since the 16th century, when the hall was first decorated.

The conservation of a set of tapestries which took 24 years and cost £1.7 million to complete has won recognition from a major international heritage award.

The work was mostly carried out at the National Trust’s own Textile Conservation Studio in Norfolk. It was started in 1999 and was completed in July 2023 when the final tapestry was returned to Hardwick Hall’s Long Gallery.

National Trust conservators used specialist conservation stitching with hand-dyed yarns to repair damaged areas and improve the appearance of 20th Century reweaves, and strengthen the structure of the tapestry.

To maintain consistency over the life of the project, precise records were kept, including recipe books with instructions on how to make the bespoke dye colours for the threads that developed over the years.
Stitch guides were also used to ensure stitches were correctly spaced to achieve consistency during the project and to discern them from the original stitches.

About the Gideon Tapestries:
The Gideon Tapestries are a set of 13 tapestries that are nearly six metres high and total over 70 metres in length (20ft x 230ft) making them one of the most ambitious tapestry sets of their time and the largest surviving set in the UK.

They tell the story of Gideon, one of the 12 Judges to appear in the Old Testament Book of Judges, who leads an army to save his people from the Midianites.

They were woven around 1578 in the Flemish region of Oudenaarde for the Lord Chancellor Sir Christopher Hatton, for the Long Gallery at Holdenby House in Northamptonshire. After his death, the tapestries were sold to Bess of Hardwick, a friend of Elizabeth I, for the sum of £326 15s 9d in 1592.

Photographs: National Trust