The Mortlake Tapestries - Forde Abbey, Somerset
Photography Emma Lewis
Home to the stunning Mortlake tapestries, woven from the internationally famous Raphael cartoons, now housed in the V&A, Forde Abbey has a rich and varied history spanning 900 years.
The client for this commision was Cabana Magazine and they requested Anna capture the morning light which descended upon these world famous tapestries and gardens. The Mortlake Tapestries are on the walls of The Saloon and are the most important works of art in the Abbey. They are woven from the cartoons painted by Raphael, which are now displayed in the Victoria & Albert Museum.
The scenes depict the lives of St Peter and St Paul, as described in St John’s Gospel and Acts of the Apostles. The original tapestries were commissioned for the Sistine Chapel, in Rome, by Pope Julius II, and were first woven in Brussels in about 1520. This set was made in London at the Mortlake factory about hundred years later.
Emma had an early 5am start to shoot the garden, but this paid off with a beautiful golden light welcoming her as she arrived and some lovely steamy, glowy shots showing the garden at its best. The early bird catches the worm as they say…
“ This was quite a tricky shoot due to the harsh morning sunlight. The dark, moody interior rooms were hard to balance with very bright sun beams making the contrast between the windows and the interiors quite extreme.”
After a pleasant excursion around the grounds, Emma then had to shoot the interiors. This was quite hard as the rooms are dark and it was a very bright day making the contrast between the windows and the interiors quite extreme. As all us photographers know, these are the conditions we fear the most, strong and harsh sunlight within a dark interior scene.
The colours came out nice and rich with an atmospheric darkness to them so Emma was happy with the results. She tried to keep most of the shots from going straight into the window to stop it blowing out too much and losing any detail.
Forde Abbey is a gigantic dwelling with extensive gardens so Emma took an excessive amount of shots which were very hard to edit down. Luckily Cabana has a really strong editorial team and quite a specific look to their magazine so she sent them quite a few options and got 26 pages in the final edit…
