Hardwick Hall welcomed more than 90 people to the local award ceremony for the A Stitch in Time: Conserving the Gideon tapestries project, winner of the European Heritage Awards / Europa Nostra Awards 2024. Guests from the heritage and culture sectors, volunteers and staff enjoyed this celebratory event on 4th November 2024 in the awe inspiring Elizabethan Great High Chamber in Hardwick Hall, Derbyshire.
Sara Robertson, Council Member and Chair of Europa Nostra UK, unveiled the awards plaque alongside longstanding volunteer John Stubbs. This was a wonderful opportunity to acknowledge the textile conservation team and all the other staff members and volunteers, past and present that had been involved in this huge 24-year endeavor, many of which attended this event. As the judges at Europa Nostra acknowledged: “This project is a testament to professionalism and the level of skill in conservation which are often unseen but are very much worthy of celebration.”
Continuing this celebration of textiles, from the historic to the contemporary, guests were then invited to view the vast tapestries in the Long Gallery, before travelling downstairs to participate in the final stages of a contemporary textile art project A Virtuous Woman by artist Layla Khoo.
The Gideon tapestries are a unique document of both Flemish tapestry production and English taste in the 16th century and are the largest set to survive in Britain today. This 24-year long conservation project, carried out by hand using traditional sewing and stitching techniques, exemplifies the National Trust’s commitment to preservation and has safeguarded these internationally significant textiles for generations to come.
Copyright: Felix Q Media / Europa Nostra
The European Heritage Awards / Europa Nostra Awards were launched by the European Commission in 2002 and have been run in partnership with Europa Nostra ever since. The call for nominations is usually launched in the summer with a deadline in November.