The Conservator and the Knight
by Anna Lunk
This work unsteadies me. It takes me back to places I thought I’d left behind. There is something about the expression on the knight’s face which reminds me of my father, the knight’s horse is straight from our meadow pastures. Long buried memories flicker back; those valley grasses, so rich, fed by the melted water from the mountains; our horses grazing under the willows; the peach blossom in the adjoining orchards; the domed church and our roofs, ripples of hardened clay. It is hard not to be homesick for such a place, though our lives were troubled and if it wasn’t the church it was our neighbours across the border and if it wasn’t them it was the toppling of an old government, or the threat of a new one. It was painful to witness such strife amidst so much beauty. My father had a saying, ’The devil loves to meddle in paradise.’ How right he was.
I am stitching the knight’s mouth, sewing in the loose ends of his grimace before they fray away into dust. Standing up to stretch my back out, clasping my hands high above my head as my osteopath has instructed, I look down on my knight and the saint who stands behind him with his circling frieze of walking birds. The saint is a morose fellow, his mouth pulled down to form the upper half of an oval. But perhaps I’m wrong about these two men, their mouths indicating no displeasure, merely wearing them as woven mouths were worn, neither grimace nor smile.
It’s the oldest piece I’ve worked on; Norwegian, thirteenth century. So here we all are, so much history in this one room. These days I know more of twenty-first century London than I do of my homeland, certainly more than I know of Norway. When Hannah, the collection conservator phoned and asked me what experience I had of Norwegian tapestries I was honest and replied, ‘None.' But I was intrigued, I could feel the work pulling me in. ‘Very little, but I’ll visit. Next Tuesday, in the afternoon?’ Hannah is used to my inability to chatter.
As soon as I saw it stretched out on the long trestles in their reserve textiles room I wanted to work on it. There was something about the boldness of the designs, the large birds and domestic animals decorating not just the borders, but surrounding the main subjects. Of course there was little left in the way of colours save the usual blues and reds, but I could imagine the lush greens and yellows of the foreground, the details in the small flowers at the saint’s feet and then that knight. I tendered low, postponed a couple of small private commissions and here it is, or rather what remains of it. The borders, top and bottom are intact, but the length stretched between rollers on my work table is clearly just a section of a longer piece. These fifteen feet are, in all likelihood, the middle section of twenty-five feet, or even thirty; a hanging for a baronial hall. Did I mention the diamonds? Little lozenges of colour scattered about the whole. And that it’s not one piece woven on a large loom, but many small pieces sewn together, each piece no more than twelve inches square, though never exactly square.
The first job after the washing was to secure the joins. It is, as I said, an extremely early example of European tapestry. I like to think the women of a village sat together working on their individual sections on little hand looms, the very looms they would have used to weave serviceable cloth for garments and blankets. But it’s possible it was one craftsman and his several apprentices working in a dusty attic. See how it pulls my mind back to my birthplace. Katrina, Katrina, I scold myself. It is better that you live in the present. This is home. You have good work, a comfortable, if unattractive house, a good husband. Had a good husband. Two years, yet I forget. He was the best possible husband, a kind and generous man who helped me become who I am now. His children drift away from me, but they have their own lives and without him, I lack confidence with them.
Above the knight’s mouth, the curve of his nose, above his nose his visor. The visor is brown, the same brown as the harness and the horse’s genitals which are large enough to be mistaken for udders. There is undoubtedly some symbolism at work here. I have sourced just the right brown from a supplier who has her own Jacob sheep and am eager to see how it will look. It breaks with convention to use undyed wool, but the colour is so perfect I’m giving it a try.
I stitch. Through the open skylight the sharsh of traffic, children’s voices from the school at the end of the road, the occasional chortling of a grubby town pigeon. I used to listen to the radio, but I grew impatient with the injustice and cruelty and clever humour. Now I prefer to work in silence. The Jacob’s wool is working well. It shows a little strong against the thirteenth century threads, but I’m confident it will fade back to match the original. I stand and do the hands clasped above my head thing again and catch a strange sound, metallic, sharp then ringing. Looking down I notice how bright my knight’s sword shines in its pale wool. Blue lozenges hang above it, but below, in the path of its fall, the weaver has chosen red for this seemingly random patterning. A shout pierces the soft moan of traffic, followed by a faint clattering of metal on asphalt, or stone.
Most conservators will say the pieces they work on speak to them across the centuries, revealing tales of their commissioning and making, their proud placement in manor, abbey or castle. But this is a different kind of speaking. It comes unbidden, as do the shards of my own memories.
I breathe slowly and focus on the familiarity of my studio, a trick I learned in those first months in England, finding reassurance in the ordinary, in concrete things. The tray with tea pot and cup and saucer sitting by the kettle, the large china sink with its high taps. I walk the room and touch objects naming them first in English, then in my own tongue. My husband bought the cup and saucer for me when the studio was first completed. ‘I found these. I thought they might be something like the china you left behind.’ And they are, very like; such fine porcelain decorated with prancing peacocks. How clever of him, how very kind. ‘They didn’t have a teapot to match, so I bought this one, just plain white, but rather pretty don’t you think?’ And indeed it is, very pretty with its elegant spout and little detailing at the base of the handle. Pretty china, safe china – no rioting soldiers here. Breathe Katrina, breathe.
Back at the work table I inspect the mornings work. It is well done. This section should survive a few more centuries. That sharp metallic sound rings out again and for a second I cannot tell whether it is carried in from the street or whether its source is here in the studio. My knight’s sword drips blood. No, not my knight. Breathe Katrina, breathe. His mouth is turned down in utter self hatred. He has killed. The silence is thick and awful, as it was when my father killed the soldier. My gentle father, reaching with such fury for the bread knife I’d left so carelessly on the table, driving it between the soldier’s shoulder blades. To be raped is a terrible violation, but I had shut my mind to it, endured the act limp under the soldier’s weight. I heard my father enter the room and willed him not to see, pleaded silently with him to leave us; the soldier to his brutal pleasure, me to my cowardly surrender. But I was my father’s only daughter. He loved me too deeply to consider his own safety.
I should never have travelled, but what had a young conservator visiting her village to fear? I had presents of books for my father and photographs of the commissions I’d recently completed. A military presence was nothing unusual. Check points were commonplace. It was spring, there would be peach blossom and I was so looking forward to seeing my father and my old friends. Perhaps I had chosen not to register the worsening situation.
I find I’m shedding tears onto the tapestry. My poor father, my poor father. He settled me in the car with such tenderness. I had only been home a few hours, but in those hours everything had changed. He said I must use my professional contacts, go to England. He would come as soon as it was safe.
They say he was buried alive, all the men from the village were. My tears fall on the knight with the sword who no longer looks like my father, but looks like a man who has taken up arms as a matter of pride, a matter of ambition. I must stop shedding salty tears onto these precious wools. Another sharp ring drifts in from the street and I remember the road works. I pick up the phone and call Hannah.
‘Hannah? Yes, yes, it is going well. Another two weeks and it will be done. Yes, it’s a remarkable piece.’
© 2010 Anna Lunk, The Conservator and the Knight
© 2010 the Boldishol Tapestery hangs in the Oslo Museum of Applied Art
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