The Tapestry Room installation
The French tapestries which once adorned the walls of Croome’s Tapestry Room were sold in 1900, and are now in the Metropolitan Museum, New York. Aiming to elicit an emotional response, the walls of the Tapestry Room were stripped back to their C18th wooden panelling, with dramatic lighting to highlight the rough surface and every remaining nail and thread from the tapestries that once hung here. A single, beautiful object is presented in a similarly dramatic way, creating a strong contrast with the backdrop of the walls, encouraging the visitor to imagine what this room might once have been like.
The Story
The exhibition in the room next door tells the full story of the tapestries: their inception and design in Paris, their life at Croome, and their current home in New York. We told the story from the perspective of the tapestries, which carried through the emotive aspect of the installation. There were also sections of the original tapestries printed onto fabric screens from photographs provided by the Met, and black and gold tables that reference a Robert Adam table that was once in the Tapestry Room. As well as archive material and a jigsaw, we used a large-format book, photos of the tapestries today, audio, and an interface of physical tools that displayed relevant information on a screen when touched.
