> A further imponderable is the extent to which cathedral walls were decorated
> with textile hangings and thus unavailable for polychromy. Someone on the list
> will remind me of the source which tells us that the English were famed across
> Europe for their tapestry work.
"Opus anglicanum" was indeed famous across Europe, but it was
actually embroidery, rather than tapestry. Despite the famously
surviving and blatantly misnamed Bayeux Tapestry, which is actually
an embroidery, most opus anglicanum probably took the form of
liturgical vestments and altar frontals rather than wall hangings
(the Bayeux Tapestry was in all likelihood initially secular).
Cheers,
Jim Bugslag
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