Yes, finally we’re back to the opus. I want my opus to picture the decline of Anglo-Saxon supremacy - to picture Christ not as Salvador Mundi, Master of the Universe, but as outdated figurehead.
This image of Christ from the John of Thanet panel seemed exactly right: the worried look on his worn-out face, his somewhat haphazard grasp of the globus cruciger in his left hand, the tilting of his right hand. I also gathered images of the Tapestry of the Apocalypse in Angers Castle, which shows all sorts of scenes of destruction) below:
details:
Now, I just need a background ….maybe a rug….?
…and I’ve got the beginnings of my composition:
But while the Anglo-Saxon world is collapsing, there are women who will work to hold it together (below):
(above) I started with the poses of these two Medieval women. The one on the left is holding a distaff, the other (on the right) holds a niddy-noddy. OK, a quick tutorial here: a distaff is a tool used to hold unspun fibers. It can be as simple as a stick or elaborately carved and painted (below):
A niddy-noddy is an adorably named tool for making skeins of yarn (below):
Back to the plan - using the poses of the two women and the faces (below) from other Opus Angelicanum work….
…..and we have two women trying to keep the world tied together (below)
Of course, this is just the first composition:
Since I’m going to spend so much time sewing this, I want to be sure I’ve got it exactly right - there’s no way I’m going to sew this twice!