Only just learnt the Bayeux Tapestry is actually an embroidery

[JamieOliverPetrolStation]

I saw a comment on social media where someone pointed out that the Bayeux Tapestry is actually an embroidery. So it's the Bayeux Embroidery.

Apparently we’ve all just agreed to call it the wrong thing for nearly a thousand years and carry on. Life is a lie. Next someone will tell me Hadrian’s Wall is a fence and Stonehenge is technically a prehistoric gazebo.

Yes it is embroidery, i am not sure why they called it a tapestry.

Dont you know what tapestry means?

@notacooldad yes, do you?

A tapestry is an embroidery.....woven with coloured threads...

But it's not news that it's an embroidery. It was probably named by someone who didn't know anything about needlework and just saw it as something thst hung on the wall like his uncle's tapestries.

Thry have called the one at the Portsmouth D-Day museum the Overlord Embroidery, but a lot of it is appliqué rather than embroidery...

We do yes that is why we are here!

Tapestry is weaving on a loom surely ?

Tapestry means ' wovern art"
It usually depicts a story.
The name Bayeux tapestry literally tells you what it is!

*Googles what is the difference between a tapestry and an embroidery?

Tapestry. The clue’s in the title.

Oh I do enjoy the confidently incorrect.

Anyway.

A tapestry is when the image/artwork is created as the fabric is woven by using different coloured threads in the weave/weft to create the image.
An embroidery is when after the cloth is woven the image/artwork is added by embroidering coloured threads onto the blank canvas of cloth.

There is such a thing as a tapestry embroidery which is effectively a combination of the two. But the Bateaux tapestry is an embroidery not a tapestry or a tapestry embroidery. It is a tapestry in the more general now hardly used definition of the word hence it's name.

Same it seems the op has a point.

I'm not sure Hadrian built any of his so-called wall.

Yes! The Bayeaux Not-A-Tapestry was one of the 10,000 entirely useless but mildly interesting things I learned at school.

OP, wait till you hear that, despite how it was referred to at the time and since, Henry VIII's split from Katharine of Aragon was not a divorce but an annulment.

[Edited for clarity.]

It's not woven though. The blank canvas was woven and then the art put on top.

There's a type of paper art where you create images with flowers, different coloured pulp etc in the frame of pulp which when dried and pressed becomes a sheet of paper. That's different to painting on a piece of paper. They are both decorative but painting a picture on paper is not the same thing as paper making.

A fascinating article about the women beyond the embroidery: https://observer.co.uk/news/national/article/they-were-stitching-for-their-lives-why-the-bayeux-tapestry-is-a-testament-to-terror

I was just about to say the same thing. Tapestry and embroidery are two different techniques. The Bayeux 'Tapestry' is actually an embroidery: https://www.bayeuxmuseum.com/en/the-bayeux-tapestry/discover-the-bayeux-tapestry/tapestry-or-embroidery/

Tapestry means ' wovern art"
It usually depicts a story.
The name Bayeux tapestry literally tells you what it is!
Oh I do enjoy the confidently incorrect.
Anyway.

OK from what I can remember and free to pull me up again, it is something to do with old language and a shift in meaning and translations over the centuries.
The French word similar to taperstry was used to describe both embodied and woven wall hangings. So in the context of the Bayeaux it is not necessarily wrong to call it a tapestry.
There's more to it than that but that's all I can remember.

Here for the entertaining argument (#team embroidery) and very much here for Stonehenge being outed as a prehistoric gazebo. 😂

I was surprised to learn that they now believe it was actually made in Kent.

Let's not get hung up on whether to call it a Tapestry or not. It is a beautiful work to view and hope you all get the chance. Even if it is an account which is very biased and supports the notion that history is written by the winners.

OMG we could even do a Donald Trump and rename it the Kent Embroidery while it's here and start another argument between us and the French! 😂🍿

Stonehenge isn't a gazebo... but it's not a henge either! 😅

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/feb/18/when-is-a-henge-not-a-henge-when-its-stonehenge

good god.