Sculptures Telling Stories by Susan Price

You might well have heard of the Kennis brothers before.

If you have, never mind. An excuse to look at their work again is always a good thing.

The Kennis brothers, Adrie and Alfons, are unsettlingly identical

Dutch twins. They refuse to call themselves artists, though they are. They are also anatomists and anthropologists and they create the most startlingly original portraits of ancient people that I’ve ever seen.

I was unaware of their work until my brother (and illustrator) Andrew, started outgrabing about a programme we were watching. It had one of those forensic recreations based on a medieval skull. The result always looks much the same, whatever skull is being used: a bland, expressionless face, rather like that of a shop-window dummy.

“Don’t waste our time!” Andrew said. “Send for the Kennis brothers! There should be a law that only the Kennis brothers are allowed to do reconstructions!"

I had never heard of the brothers Kennis, but once directed to their website, I could see Andrew’s point. When you look at one of their recreations, it looks back. It almost speaks. You feel that if you could catch it at the right moment, it would tell you a joke or the story of its life. And I would be all ears.

I think the Kennises refuse to call themselves artists because everything they do is based on research and evidence. Their approach is meticulous. Each of their sculptures is based on an individual skeleton. After much research into the anatomy of that individual and its species, they first build a skeleton -- a neanderthal skeleton or an erectus skeleton. They even build it a flexible spine.

They add muscles of clay. They add rope for arteries. They layer on the skin in translucent layers of silicon, as an oil painter does with layers of coloured pigment.

They don’t guess at the colouring. DNA analysis provides them with the most likely eye, hair and skin colour. One of their most controversial – and beautiful – sculptures is based on the skull of a young man found in Cheddar Gorge. Often known as ‘the oldest Briton’ he dates from 10,000 years ago. (Though one of his direct descendants was found living just down the road. And it's reckoned that 10% of modern Britons are descended from him. That's about six and half million of us.)

The Kennises portrayed him as having dark, wavy hair, quite dark brown ‘black’ skin and blue eyes.

Some people were simply surprised, especially by the contrast between the dark skin and light eyes. But there was the usual ‘political correctness gone mad’ reaction from the usual sources, with the insulting implication that the Kennis brothers had given their subject this colouring on a whim, to gain publicity or kudos for being ‘woke’ and ‘progressive.’

The truth is, they gave him that colouring because that is what their research and the DNA analysis of his bones indicated. The DNA results are never absolutely definitive but they indicated something like a 75% probability that his skin was dark and his eyes light.

What struck me most forcibly when I first saw the sculpture was not its colouring but its personality: its expression and liveliness. These sculptures change with the angle and lighting. From some angles, Cheddar Man seems about to burst into laughter. His face conveys warmth and friendliness. I don't like the expression but, god help me, he has 'a twinkle in his eye.'

Since it’s moulded around a reconstruction of his skull, he must have looked something like that. Maybe in life he was a miserable so-and-so without a good word for anyone. We'll never know. But even if the personality given him by the Kennises is completely wrong, their sculpture strongly conveys a great truth to us in a way more direct and compelling than words: that these ancient bones we dig up were once living people, as vital as we are.

This post has been all text and no pictures because the Kennis brothers work is copyright. However, here you can read an article about their work, which has many photographs.

And here’s a link to their website, with many more photographs of their work. I’m particularly fond of the Neanderthal grandmother, with the child hugging her.

I think their recreation of Australopithecus Lucy is astonishing — she isn’t human and yet she is, in spades. Chin up, arms on her hips, she looks down her nose at us and stares us out. She has personality all right: she has Attitude. And sass. Looking at her I feel that, any moment, her mouth is going to open and the voice of one of my great, great, great, great, great grandmothers is going to tick me off.

Turkana Boy, too, is an amazing piece of necromancy. (Click down through the pictures on the right of the Moesgaard Museum page.) There he is, stave across his shoulders, head cocked, giving someone some cheek. Looking at them all, I think each one holds a story — is telling us a story — if we could only hear it.

I leave you with a film of Adrie and Alfons at work.

Susan Price won the Carnegie medal for The Ghost Drum

and

The Guardian Award for The Sterkarm Handshake.

Her website, with reviews, writing tips, short stories and book extracts

is here.

Welcome to the Iron Age! - by Ruth Downie

Comfortable, convenient and ready to move in - welcome to your new home in the Iron Age!

A well-built house will stand up to whatever the weather gods throw at you.*

The central fireplace will keep the family warm all year round.*

The neatly-finished conical roof has no pesky ventilation holes to let in the rain or cause dangerous updraughts, and the smoke rising from the hearth will repel bothersome insects as it finds it way out through the thatch.

Your new home is designed with the traditional east-facing doorway so all the family can enjoy light and warming sunshine first thing in the morning.

Handy fuel store within easy reach!*

You will find secure on-site grain storage to see you through the winter months.

Further storage pits can be added as you need them.*

There's no escaping the daily grind if we want to enjoy our daily bread!

Where better to turn wheat into flour than by the comfort of your own hearth?*

Your plot includes fine farming land, so with a little planning, honest toil and the goodwill of the gods, everything you need to feed the family will be just outside your door.

A promising litter of piglets*

Milk, meat, skins...*

Wheat and barley grow well in the British climate, so if the water from the nearby wells and springs is not to your taste, why not take up home brewing?

New clothes for all the family? Here’s where you start!

Top-quality fleece in the making.*

Colour your clothing with the natural dyes available on-site.

Woad is easy to grow!

Weaving: a creative and useful pastime*

Although we are thrilled to welcome you to the Iron Age, where visiting smiths will happily supply you with iron tools and weapons if necessary...

Hopefully for display purposes only***

... you can be confident that all the old familiar metals are still available.

Bronze (plus enamel!) for chariot fittings***

Gold for wearing on those special occasions***

Rest assured also that when the exciting sounds and smells of modern metalworking fade away, your home will be just as quiet and peaceful as you would expect, leaving you to enjoy the songs of the birds, the chirrup of grasshoppers, and the bleating of your happy sheep in the meadow.

And finally... at the end of the day, sleep in peace, knowing that you and your neighbours are surrounded by a secure boundary. 

It may look a little bare now..

...but this is how it will look before long.*

We think you’ll agree that the privacy, safety and comfort that you and your family deserve has never been so beautiful!


ALTERNATIVELY…


Be the envy of your friends with an individually-refurbished seaside residence!

Adventurous home-makers will thrill to the exciting potential of Chysauster, a highly original development of exclusive courtyard dwellings in the far West. Enjoy an alternative to the Roman style that is becoming popular elsewhere in these islands.

Glimpse the sea from your front door!**

Chysauster offers stunning coastal and countryside views and its very own underground shared storage facility.

Ample underground storage: a luxury known locally as a "fogou".**

Each unit is made up of a central courtyard surrounded by private rooms.**

 These properties are ripe for modernization, so don’t miss this once-in-a-lifetime chance to create a truly bespoke rural hideaway!

FIND OUT MORE!

For full details of the splendid properties and facilities marked with *, please visit Butser Ancient Farm, either online or better still, in person. You will be welcome to stroll through the impressive range of show houses on display from several eras, all carefully based on archaeological evidence.

The delightful site of Chysauster (marked **) is near Penzance, and the houses are open to visitors - find out more here.

All the items labelled ***, and very much more, can be seen in Norwich Castle Museum.



Ruth Downie writes a series of murder mysteries set mostly in Roman Britain, featuring a Roman military medic called Ruso and his British partner, Tilla. The latest book in the series is a novella, PRIMA FACIE.

Colouring in Oxford by Janie Hampton

The tower of Magdalen College was built in 1492 beside the River Cherwell
Copyright Janie Hampton, 2019.

The River Cherwell (pronounced ‘Charwell’) flows into the River Thames- but where it flows through Oxford, the Thames is called the Isis! It then goes back to being the Thames until London and then the English Channel. On May Morning, Magdalen choir sing from the top of the tower at dawn. Then drunk students leap off Magdalen Bridge into the River Cherwell. It is shallow enough to punt, so a dangerous pastime. On the left are the Oxford Botanical Gardens, home to many exotic and wonderful plants.

It is far too hot here in Southern England to read much. So here are some drawings of the history of Oxford you may print out. Then go and sit under a tree, or any shadey, cool place, and colour them in. Choose your favourite. Or print out several and offer them to friends, or neighbours. But don't sell them or use them for commercial gain. You can use paint, coloured pencils or felt pens, or a combination of all three. There are no rules for colouring. Use any colour you like, stay in the lines, go over the lines, add your own flowers, leaves and people. The only rule is that you should enjoy doing it. This is not work, or school prep, it is for fun!

Queen Elizabeth I (1533-1603) visited Oxford once, in 1566.
The castle mound in the background is still there. Copyright Janie Hampton, 2019.

In 1566 Queen Elizabeth I (1533-1603) visited Oxford during her annual ‘Royal Progress’ around England. The Queen and her courtiers were entertained by university students with debates, plays and music. She attended discussions at the Church of St Mary the Virgin and closed the final debate herself with a speech in Latin. Five years later in 1571, she founded Jesus College, the first Protestant college. Her father, Henry VIII, had ensured she was well-educated and although she had no children of her own, she paid for the education of many of her 100 godchildren.

Alice Lidell (left) and her sisters Lorina and Edith with ukuleles in 1848.
From a photograph by Lewis Carroll, author of ‘Alice in Wonderland’.
Copyright Janie Hampton, 2019.

The drawing above of Alice Lidell (1852-1934) and her sisters is possibly the first ever photo of anyone playing a ukelele. Though some people dispute these were exactly like ukeleles that we play today. Can you spot the characters from ‘Alice in Wonderland’? 

Stained glass window in Christ Church Cathedral, designed by Pre-Raphaelite artist Edward Burne-Jones (1833-1898) . Copyright Janie Hampton, 2019.

Christ Church cathedral was built on the site of St Frideswide's monastery, which dates back to the 12th Century. Christ Church College, where many British Prime Ministers were educated, was built in 1525, funded by Henry VIII as part of his dissolution of Roman Catholic monasteries and establishment of the Church of England.
Oxford, originally called Oxnaforda, (the place where Oxen could cross the river without a bridge) has been here for over a thousand years. I have lived in Oxford thirty four years this week, and little has changed, apart from more traffic, more visitors and more cafés with wi-fi. It is not often I really look at this beautiful, old city. Doing these drawings made me look, and think, and appreciate. One day I may have enough to make a whole book. But for now, I share a few of them with you, gentle readers. If you like them I shall do some more.

www.janiehampton.co.uk 

Wine Tasting in the South of France, by Carol Drinkwater

I am frequently asked about good wineries to visit as a day trip from our Olive Farm in the south of France. The fact is there are dozens to suggest. So I thought it would be fun this month during these very hots days - in French we call such a heatwave la canicule - to offer a few snippets about our local wine history as well as making one or two suggestions of fabulous chateaux or more modest vineyards. Havens, where you can sit in the shade and sip a chilled glass or two of local wine.

From Banyuls,  close to the Spanish border, to Bellet above the coastal city of Nice, wines are produced. The South of France is a rich wine area with many varieties growing in the vineyards. Although all colours are being produced, the Midi is most renowned for its rosés. The hot climate marries well with a chilled lighter variety. This is a land of hilltop towns and sleepy villages where the most exciting event of the week is market day and where the playing of boules or pétanque in the village squares, shaded by plane trees, is still the most popular pastime.

The south was its own country. Links with Paris were almost non-existent. Southerners, with their own rich cultural identity, communicated and conversed in their own language, the langue d'oc, until 1539 when the Ordinance of Villers-Cotterets made French, the langue d'oil, the administrative language of France. By 1789,  the time of the French Revolution, these richly-poetic southern tongues had been outlawed. Provençal is a dialect of Occitan and was spoken in the eastern half of southern France. These are romance languages, once the language of the troubadours.

The great port city of Marseille, originally Marsilia then Massalia was founded by Greeks from Asia Minor sometime around 600 BC. These intrepid sailors were Phoceans from Phocaea, known now as Foça in Modern Turkey. That entire western coast of Asia Minor, today Turkey, was inhabited by Greeks until the population exchange of 1922/1923 that followed the Greco-Turkish War of 1919 to 1922.

Within striking distance of Marseille, you will find:
The Calanques National Park is on Marseille's doorstep.

This is where my latest novel, THE HOUSE ON THE EDGE OF THE CLIFF, is set. A very moody shot taken on a wet and windy spring day.

Turning north, follow the D9 towards Aix-en-Provence, then direction to Puy-Sainte-Reparade and you will find Chateau la Coste.

This vineyard estate, also a hotel and art gallery, is a unique experience. The 600-hectare property is owned by Paddy McKillan an Irishman from Belfast. The chateau, more a country house, where his family resides, dates from the 17th century. The views while walking in the vineyards are memorable. Timeless. There are works of art scattered all about the place.

Until recently, southern French wines have been rather looked down upon even by the French. That is changing rapidly. The rosé wines from this area, though few are grand crus, are possibly the best in the world and perfectly adapt to the long hot days of our southern summers. 

Paddy McKillan of Chateau La Coste aspires to produce the best rosé in the world.

The Bandol area, west of Marseille, has an abundance of vineyards to visit. The coastal strip is very well-known for it rosés. Bandol itself has become a rather touristy resort town but take a short drive inland and you will find peace and quiet and time to reflect within the dozens of vineyards, most are ready to welcome you.

We usually buy a couple of cases for summer at Moulin de la Roque Bandol. Outside Bandol near Le Castellet. The winery was founded in 1950 in an old wheat mill. It boasts 305 hectares of land and straddles eight communes.

The Phoenicians visited our coast of southern France around the same time as the ancient Greeks, possibly even a little earlier. Both the Greeks and the Phoenicians were experts in agriculture. Wine and olive oil were two of their most valued commodities. The Phoenicians, who came from city-states in what today is Lebanon, Syria and parts of the coast of modern-day Israel, were not conquerors but traders. Traders, par excellence. They were on the look-out for tin and precious metals. They founded or visited ports, entrepôts, emporia, all around the Mediterranean bringing with them olive oil, wine, peacock feathers along with a wide range of exotic goods including marijuana seeds. They also transported aboard their ships, plants and agricultural utensils. They taught the local peoples they encountered how to farm and cultivate the products they were trading (not marijuana as far as I know!). Palestine, a neighbouring terrain to the Phoenicians in the Middle East, was renowned for its wines.

It was the Syrians who first put wine into glass containers and the Gauls who invented the use of the barrel.

There is some evidence to suggest that the Celts were cultivating grape vines here - vitis vinifera, which is the most common of all grape plants - even before the Phoenicians or Greeks arrived. It is a plant native to the Mediterranean. Cultivars of vitis vinifera are the basis of almost all the wines produced worldwide so this small plant, this liana, has certainly travelled and impacted on cultures everywhere and has been around for millennia, rather like the olive tree.

It is not Bordeaux or Burgundy but Provence that is the oldest wine-growing region in France. The Phoenicians transported wine to trade, possibly also vines for planting, but it was the Greeks who established the vineyards. This means that wine production in southern France dates back 2,600 years.

Archaeological remains found in this region indicate that the terraces were handcrafted as early as the 6th century B.C. Irrigation was achieved by the construction of the famous drystone walls. It is possible that the Greeks or even Phoenicians brought this skill to the local people.

After the Greeks came the Romans who, while empire-expanding, spread the knowledge of viticulture throughout France giving birth to France's most famous wine regions: Bordeaux, Burgundy, Alsace, Champagne amongst others.

After the collapse of the Roman Empire, France's agricultural prowess went into decline. Charles 1, Charlemagne, crowned Emperor of the Romans by Leo III on Christmas Day in the year 800, brought unity to Europe and power to the Catholic Church. The church was involved in the development of viticulture.  Wine was an important part of monastic life. There are many Benedictine and Cistercian abbeys that in their day offered rooms to travellers, spiritual repose and were centres of learning. Hospitality, of course, included food and wine.

Right on our doorstep, a half an hour journey by boat from the old port of Cannes, lies the island of Saint-Honorat. This pretty little island is home to a community of Cistercian monks who grow their own food, keep bees and produce their own wine from eight hectares of vineyard. They have been producing fine wines and liqueurs since the Middle Ages.

(A little fact about Saint-Honorat Island that always pleases my Irish soul is that Saint Patrick studied here during the 6th century).

The vineyards of Bellet nestle quietly up in the hills behind the port-city of Nice which became a part of France in 1860 when it was ceded from Italy. Nice is the only city in France - aside from one small vineyard in Montmartre in the heart of Paris - to claim vineyards within its city boundaries. This area was once an important viticultural department. This is no longer the case. Still, the Bellet wines are well regarded and sell for a good price. I recommend a visit to the vineyards of the Château du Bellet with its rather lovely private chapel.

                             The interior of the private chapel, once part of the family estate of the Château du Bellet, Nice. The chapel has been deconsecrated and converted into the wine-tasting area.

The Château de Bellet is approximately twelve kilometres inland, high above Nice. The vineyards are no longer owned by the de Charnacé family, the ancestors of the Barons of Bellet. The present owner, Ghislaine de Charnacé, grandson of the last Bellet Baron, inherited the estate from his mother Rose de Bellet, whose family gave its name to the local wine. In 2012, the family sold off the vineyards and chapel but not the ancestral home with its round towers and ochre and red façades. The vineyards are now in the hands of a conglomerate, 'La Française Real Estate Managers' - a rather unattractive moniker that conjures up none of the romanticism and history of 'Barons of Bellet'. To be fair, this company has kept the traditions, the local cépages, while bringing its winemaking technology into the twenty-first century.
A day trip from Nice is easy and, when I last looked, you did not need an appointment. Lovely views, four to five degrees cooler than down at the coast and well worth a visit.
By the way, this is an organic vineyard and has been since 2013.

                                      Views from one of the Château du Bellet vineyards.

There are many influences and a wide variety of political histories, Greek, Roman, Catalan, Provençal to name but a few. Each has brought something to our wine story.

Cheers! This is me sipping our homemade orange wine.

My novel, The Forgotten Summer, is set on an vineyard in the south of France. A French family who fled Algeria after the War of Independence buy a rundown vineyard overlooking the Mediterranean ...

www.caroldrinkwater.com

Cornwall by Miranda Miller

    Holidaying in Cornwall last month, I was struck by the two very different faces of the county: the beautiful, cheerful, prosperous coast and the strange ruined melancholy industrial buildings that lie abandoned on many cliffs and moorlands. It still feels quite remote and in fact many Cornish people don’t consider that Cornwall is an English county at all but a British country, Kernow. The Cornish nationalist movement demands a devolved legislative Cornish Assembly with powers similar to those in Wales and Scotland.

   Before the railways arrived, the journey from London to Penzance took at least two days by road. By the 1860s the rail journey had reduced this to twelve hours. A traditional Cornish tale claims that the devil would never dare to cross the River Tamar into Cornwall for fear of ending up as a pasty filling. Tourists didn’t come either until the nineteenth century.

   Virginia Woolf’s father, the literary critic and historian Sir Leslie Stephen, rented Talland House overlooking St Ives Bay in Cornwall, which he described in an 1884 letter as “a pocket-paradise with a sheltered cove of sand in easy reach (for ‘Ginia even) just below”. For her first twelve years she spent a few months each year at Talland House. The Godrevy Lighthouse could be seen in the distance and although Woolf set To the Lighthouse on the Scottish Isle of Skye, much of its imagery comes from her time in Cornwall.

    For nearly four thousand years before the first tourists arrived Cornwall was an important producer of tin, which when mixed with copper forms the alloy bronze. Although there are few Roman sites in Cornwall it is thought that they mined here. After the Romans left Cornwall remained under the rule of local Romano-British and Celtic elites and there were strong links with Brittany.

   Miners had the right to look for tin in any open land, as laid out in the Charter of Liberties to the Tinners of Devon and Cornwall in 1201. The same Charter also allowed miners to be exempt from military service and to pay lower taxes.

   In the eighteenth century deep mining of copper was made possible by the invention of pumping equipment to remove some of the water from underground and Cornwall became the greatest producer of copper in the world.  A Cornishman, Richard Trevithick, developed high pressure steam engines which, mounted on wheels, became the world’s first locomotives.

   A miner's life was always hard and brutal. Arsenic, which was used in insecticide and in paint, is a by-product of the processing of copper and tin. Because it is so poisonous workers needed to keep their mouth, nose and skin covered at all times, using clay to protect their skin at work. Women and girls didn’t go underground but were an essential part of the mining industry. Known as ‘Bal Maidens’, these women helped to separate tin from other mined substances.“Bal” is a Cornish word for mine.

    By 1839 about seven thousand children were working in the Cornish mines. Sons often followed their fathers down into the mines from the age of twelve. One particularly dangerous job they had to do was sweeping arsenic out of the flues.

   Temperatures underground sometimes reached 60 c. The miners worked stripped to the waist and after their shifts their bodies were covered in red dust from the lodes of tin, copper and zinc they exploded out of the bare rock. Death and injury from rockfalls and explosions were quite common and many miners developed bronchitis, TB and rheumatism. Few miners were fit to work beyond the age of forty.

   Then tin lodes were discovered in Australia, the Far East and South America, creating huge competition for the Cornish mines. Many mines closed in the 1890s and there was a “Cornish diaspora”, as miners left Cornwall to seek their fortunes in other mining areas across the world.

  

    This is the South Wheal mine, used in filming the TV series Poldark.

     The remaining mines still employed a lot of men and despite the dangers of the job it was lucrative. “Some weeks I would bring home £180 thanks to the bonuses,” said one ex-miner.“The average wage in Cornwall at that time (in the 1960s) was £12 a week.”

   Then, in October 1985, the price of tin crashed from over ten thousand pounds a ton ton to about three and a half thousand pounds a ton. This was because new alluvial tin was discovered in Malaysia and Brazil and also because the United States released their tin stockpile reserve onto the open market at the London Metal Exchange. Overnight, the remaining Cornish mines became unviable.

   In 1998, after more than three hundred years, one of the biggest mines, South Crofty, was forced to close with losses of thirty-three million pounds. Thousands of people were thrown out of work and towns such as Camborne, that once had thriving mines, now feel sad and impoverished.

   In 2016 a Canadian company, Strongbow Exploration, acquired a one hundred per cent stake in South Crofty, along with mineral rights over a further seven thousand hectares of land across Cornwall. A spokesman said: “We wouldn’t be doing this if we didn’t think South Crofty could open again. It was the jewel in the crown of an area with a rich mining history, and we believe that there’s a really good chance we can get it open again. We are extremely optimistic and feel that if everything goes well the mine could be open by 2021, and by open we mean with tin coming out of the ground.”

The British Museum Citole by Elizabeth Chadwick

Whenever I have a spare moment in London,  I will invariably head for a museum. A couple of weeks ago I was there on business and happened to have an afternoon free which was spent very profitably in the British Museum.
I enjoy photography, but I am in the realms of keen amateur and happy snapper.  It's something that gives me pleasure and it's a hobby outside of my day job, but purely for off the cuff fun.  For some time I have been trying to get a good shot of the citole in the medieval exhibit at the British museum, but lighting and reflection makes it extremely difficult and I have yet to succeed in obtaining a great image.  This is a photo from the British Museum's own website and used as per the permission on the site.

This beautiful object is a Citole formerly known as a gittern.  A citole, pronounced 'sit-oll' was originally a plucked instrument but it was later converted into violin form to be played with a bow.   Its life as a complete instrument began in the late 13th to early 14th century and the original parts are the back, the sides and neck.  The new parts consist of the sound board, finger board, tail piece and bridge. Above the peg box there is a silver-gilt plate engraved with the garter arms of Elizabeth I and Robert Dudley.  The carved, decorated panels depict hunting scenes, and the end terminates in a fabulous dragon with a jewelled green eye. The hunting scenes are typical of 14th century manuscript illustration, but such details are much rarer to find in wood.  The best comparison are the early 14th century choirstalls in Winchester Cathedral.

You can hear an example of a replica citole being played here by its owner Ian Pittaway here on Youtube. Ian Pittaway Citole

As to my photos.  Although as usual I didn't have much luck with the citole in its entirety, I did take a rather good one of the ends, and especially the green-eyed dragon.  What marvelous, skilled wood carving!

Elizabeth Chadwick is a multi award winning bestselling historical novelist. Her latest novel The Irish Princess will be published on September 12th under LittleBrown's Sphere imprint.

The Enigma of the Lady and the Unicorn

Recently I had the opportunity to visit the National Museum of the Middle Ages in Paris, which houses the famous series of Flemish tapestries known as The Lady and the Unicorn. My immediate impression on entering was of size, gorgeous colour and dizzying detail. The tapestries were much larger than I'd imagined - clearly meant for a room of very grand proportions, yet a closer look reveals the minute detail in the work with its 'mille-fleurs' background of differentiated plants and flowers.

Image by Joe de Sousa

I've long been interested in these tapestries, partly because of the strangeness of the mythical beast and the stories that have grown up around it: the belief that only a virgin can tame a unicorn, with its reference to sexual innocence and experience, the speculation that the idea of a unicorn originated in a very inaccurate description of a rhinoceros as being 'like a horse with a horn'. I had also read that the tapestries depicted six senses and was keen to find out what sense existed beyond sight, hearing, touch, taste and smell. Through reading various guides and talking to the room attendant I soon learnt that there is more than one interpretation of not only the sixth tapestry but the meaning of the whole series. Is it an allegory of Love or Renunciation?

The tapestries are thought to have been woven at the end of the fifteenth century and the coat of arms on the standard show a blue band with three crescent moons, which belonged to the Le Liste family from Lyons. This identification is further supported by the choice of a lion as standard bearer. One might be forgiven for jumping to the conclusion that the tapestries celebrate a wedding in the family, as the last tapestry makes reference to 'A MON SEUL DESIR' - 'My One Desire'. One guide rebuts this, saying that all the women pictured have different faces. On the other hand, they are all blonde and perhaps it would not have been easy  for different workers to replicate a face? The truth is that as a novelist I would rather like it to be linked to an actual event, with the promise of a story behind it . . .

The representation of the five senses is very clear.  The first tapestry in the cycle shows the lady holding up a mirror to the unicorn and thus depicts Sight. Hearing is shown through the lady playing a 'positif' (portable organ) and smell by the lady plucking a carnation from her maidservant's basket, humorously echoed in the mimicry of a tiny monkey.

Taste is shown by the lady taking a sweet  from a dish offered by her maidservant and Touch in a tableau where the lady holds the standard with one hand while touching the unicorn's horn with the other.

 http://www.tchevalier.com/unicorn/tapestries

The sixth and final tapestry is where a conundrum arises. Is the lady taking a jewelled necklace or returning it to the casket? As she is no longer wearing the necklace that she wore in the other tapestries, several scholars seem to agree that she is returning it, thus suggesting not a preparation for love but a renunciation and a rejection of the world of pleasure represented by the senses. In support of this they draw attention to the motif of tears on the pavilion and interpret  'A MON SEUL DESIR' to mean 'according to my will only'. In this case, the last tapestry relates more to the intellect than the heart. To say it represents an act of Christian charity is perhaps to take the analogy too far  as she appears not to be giving the necklace  away but storing it. Nonetheless this interpretation is quite convincing.

Additional evidence for this view may be that the other senses are presented in order of the importance given to them in Medieval belief, with Sight and Hearing first as the higher senses - those senses through which we can most easily learn and become enlightened. Smell, taste and touch come later.

On the other hand, further motifs within the tapestry series, such as the recurring rabbit or hare, the profusion of flowers and plants and a tree laden with pineapples suggest references to fertility and thus are concerned with love rather than the intellect. The pavilion may represent a private place into which lovers could withdraw.

The writings of the Chancellor of the University of Paris, Jean Gerson  (1363 -1429) mention 'six senses - five external and one internal - namely the heart - which we must master as six schoolchildren.' He sees the heart as the controller of the physical senses and needing to be schooled to avoid sins such as lust. As the tapestries are thought to have been created some time in the last two decades of the fifteenth century, this strand of thought that sees the heart as a sixth sense, controlling both desire and the soul, would have been familiar and is thought to have been widespread in 15th century France.

Is it not possible that there are elements of both Love and Morality present? We must avoid falling into the trap of thinking that people of an earlier time were any less subtle or complex in their thinking than we are, just because their beliefs were different. My own impression was that the tapestries have a rich duality with elements of both renunciation and eroticism.