Gill Roberts - The Liverpool 08 Tapestry

We had specified that all pieces had to be handed in by the
beginning of January 2011, when Elsie and I again met at the
Unitarian Church, this time to begin to lay out the pieces into some
kind of order. Joe had discussed with us the assembling of the
Tapestry, and had suggested that at this point we should hand over
the work to someone else, a professional textile worker who would
be paid to do the ‘hard graft’ of sewing together the now 338 pieces
which comprised the work. I would be lying if I said Elsie and I
were reluctant to do this; once we realised the monumental scale of
the work, we had begun to have serious doubts about our ability to
assemble the pieces in a way that did justice to the piece, given that
it was bigger than any work we had previously done. At that meeting
in a freezing church hall, we laid out the pieces and realised our 7’
by 7’ hanging had now evolved into a work approximately 7’ high by
23’ long, based on the triptych format we had originally envisaged,
and were deeply grateful for Joe’s suggestion and his willingness to
finance this final part of the work.
At this point, two other professional and valuable people came on
board the tapestry project. The first of these was Andy Paterson,
a freelance photographer, whose photographs form the basis of
this book. Over five sessions, he photographed each individual
Elsie Watkins, Pete Price (presenter, Radio City) Gill Roberts, Hazel Williams (Lord Mayor) and Joe Morris.
piece, offering suggestions for the book and valuable advice about
presentation and layout. The second, who we found after much help
and advice from Pauline Rushton, textile curator of the National
Galleries and Museum on Merseyside, was Anne-Marie Hughes,
a textile conservator who work with many major museum and
galleries both in the UK and abroad.
Our first meeting with Anne-Marie is probably etched in her
memory as one of deep shock. Pauline Rushton had told her she
thought there were approximately 100 pieces to the tapestry, based
on the number we had selected for the exhibition at the Walker Art
Gallery several months previously. When she had been told there
were now 338 pieces, the scale of the work involved was so far in
excess of what she was expecting that she spent quite a bit of time
with her head in her hands as each fresh practical issue changed the
scale of what we had envisaged.
Originally the plan had been to frame behind glass the three panels,
to protect and preserve them as much as possible. Peter Spinks,
a conservation framer whom Anne-Marie has worked extensively
with, also came along to the meeting and the plan to put behind
glass immediately began to be unrealistic. It would have required
specialist glass to be imported from Germany (at huge cost), specialist
The Liverpool Tapestry: People, Places and Passions | 13