Quaker Tapestry staff and volunteer team choose their favourite exhibits in our new series of blogs.
Lisa Moore, Quaker Tapestry Museum Operations Manager, tells us why she chose ‘Firbank Fell: George Fox Preaching’ as her favourite exhibit…
”Growing up, I spent a lot of time around Sedbergh and the surrounding area close to Firbank Fell as it’s where my Dad’s family is from. I have also been in St Andrew’s Church, which is featured in the panel on numerous occasions for family events. When I started working at the Quaker Tapestry Museum over 16 years ago, my Dad took me to Firbank Fell for the first time and I really imagined how George Fox may have felt standing there preaching to all those people hundreds of years ago. My Dad then took me to see Brigflatts Meeting House, built in 1675 which is absolutely beautiful. The whole experience of that day was quite moving and the panel which incorporates so many elements of that day and my past really holds a strong connection for me and I am very fond of it.”
About the panel
This panel records two events in 1652. June 9th was the time of the hiring fair in Sedbergh, we see the figure of George Fox, speaking to a crowd of people. In the background is Sedbergh church, from which many of the congregation had emerged to listen to George Fox. As he preached outside the ‘steeple house’ he was asked why he didn’t go inside the church to preach. He replied that a steeple house was not the church, but the people to whom Christ was the head.
June 13th, Fox himself described what happened;
‘While others were gone to dinner, I went to a brook, got a little water, and then came and sat down on the top of a rock hard by the chapel. In the afternoon the people gathered about me, with several of their preachers. It was judged there were above a thousand people; to whom I declared God’s everlasting truth and Word of life freely and largely for about the space of three hours.’
Fox declared “Keep your feet upon the top of the mountain and sound deep to that of God in everyone” stressing that religion must permeate the whole of life, that consecrated buildings were an irrelevance and that there was no need of priests to stand as mediator or interpreter between the individual man or woman and God.
If you climb Firbank Fell, you will find a plaque on the side of a rock called Fox’s Pulpit, the inscription on the plaque begins with ‘Let your lives speak’ to mark the message from Fox that day in 1652.
Many of those who gathered on Firbank Fell were ‘seekers’, men and women who were in sympathy with Fox and who received his message gladly and enthusiastically, consequently this event is sometimes considered the beginning of the Friends movement. Fox then travelled to Ulverston and to Swarthmoor Hall where he met the family of Judge and Margaret Fell – a meeting of great importance for the Society of Friends.
About the stitches
Designed by Anne Wynn-Wilson (founder of the Quaker Tapestry) and Joe McCrum, this panel was partly embroidered by Anne herself, experimenting with the size of figures, how large, how small; showing a superb use of the Bayeux technique in the boots, jacket and shirt. The trousers and the hair show how the first stage of Bayeux, tied down with freely embroidered stem, split and chain stitch could add to the three dimensional effect. Anne’s husband, David, standing in his gardening trousers provided a pattern for the creases and folds of the leather breeches always worn by Fox, who was, indeed, known as “the man in the leather breeches”
The small vignette of the shepherds and their eminently strokeable dogs is an example of Anne’s teaching…
“You must feel, think and stroke the dog, convey a person’s thought in their expression and stance, and then your embroidery will come to life”
The trees with their distinctive triangular shapes were designed from a photograph taken from Fox’s Pulpit on Firbank Fell and show the stunted growth of the hawthorn bushes and trees being sculpted by the winds which whistle over the Cumbrian fells. The church and the hills are good examples of the use of the wonderful background material, allowing it to stand for stones, walls, and the fells, without the need for elaborate embroidery.
You can view ‘Firbank Fell: George Fox Preaching’, and other panels, here at Quaker Tapestry Museum, Kendal or view all 77 panels on our website
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