St Thomas in India glass window versus tapestry

When I looked up the painted glass window of the joiners guild in Chartres cathedral (France) on internet, I accidentally stumbled upon another stained glass window depicting the same legend of St. Thomas in India that is on the Thomas tapestry in Wienhausen, Germany. This glass window is in one of the bays of the aisles of Chartres cathedral (see the red arrow on the cathedral map). The window was made between 1205 and 1235. It has a lancet form and is roughly 8.1 m long and 2.2 m wide. In comparison, the Thomas tapestry dates from the late 14th century and measures roughly 4 by 2 m.

 

              














It is interesting to compare both legends of St. Thomas and note the similarities and differences. The photos of the windows were made by Dr. Stuart Whatling and taken from his website on medieval glass windows, which is well worth checking out. The legend of St. Thomas starts at the bottom of the window and moves more or less zigzag to the top. The specific details of the reading order are found on this web-page. The detailed images of the Thomas tapestry make use a scanned photo from a book. The original tapestry hangs in Kloster Wienhausen.

The incredulity of the unbelieving St. Thomas. This scene was later in the 13th century added to the window

 Christ sends St. Thomas on a mission to evangelise India (Ga int lant India).

 St. Thomas is given to Abbanes, an envoy of an Indian king, who seeks an architect.

 St. Thomas and Abbanes travel by boat to India and disembark on the shore.

St. Thomas is welcomed to a marriage feast.

  At the wedding feast Thomas refuses to eat, and is struck by the cupbearer.

The cupbearer is killed by a lion or bear, and a dog brings back the hand that had struck St. Thomas (see previous images).

Abbanes presents St. Thomas to King Gundophorus as his new architect.

 King Gundophorus provides St. Thomas with gold to build his new palace.

  King Gundophorus leaves for a long journey.

 Thomas erects churches instead of building a palace.

 The remainder of the money is divided among the poor.

 The King returns and throws St. Thomas into prison in order to be executed.

The kings brother, Gad, becomes very ill.

     

 Gad dies and is welcomed into heaven.

 

Gad is shown the palace in heaven that St. Thomas has build for his brother.

 

 Gad is resurrected and reconciles his brother with St. Thomas. Thomas baptises King Gundophorus and his people.

(St. Thomas moves on to the realm of King Mydeus. He converts his wife and children.) 

St. Thomas is captured and thrown into an oven, but survives.

 St. Thomas is commanded by King Mygdeus to worship an heathen idol.

Thomas orders the demon inside the idol to destroy its own temple.

The angry high priest of the temple slays St. Thomas with a sword.

Followers of St. Thomas bury his body.

Pilgrims go to the shrine of St. Thomas.

Pilgrims succumb to sleep at the shrine. St. Thomas returns from the grave to give his blessing to the pilgrims. The last part is only found in the tapestry and not part of the official lives of the Saint.

Angels watch from above.

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Thomas tapestry project choosing the tapestry wool

Last months we have been busy testing several types of wool on the linen we will use for our recreation of the Saint Thomas tapestry. There were great differences between the wools from different producers. Some threads were far too loosely winded to be able to work easily; these threads quickly started to unravel and wear during stitching (exit Appleton), or they were too thick to stitch through our linen (exit DMC). Others were worse and broke already when applying very little strength (exit Holst Garn). We wondered how people could ever use (or wear) textiles made with this wool.. Two other wools were too thick to use, and could not be easily pulled through the linen. Two other wool types proved equally fine: Renaissance dying and Wollschmiede. Both manufacturers make naturally (hand) coloured wool. Since the first was recommended by our blog readers, and had a large variety of colours to choose from, we have chosen their wool to work with.

You can easily see the differences between the wools thickness and winding of the wool types. 

The left one we will use for our tapestry.

Having decided which wool we would, we ordered a colour card of the available colour to be able to choose the colours we would need. When making our choice for certain colours we had to keep in mind that the colours of the original Thomasteppich have faded over the centuries (especially the light green and black), changing, but also creating a variety within a colour. Below is the list of 13 colours we have chosen for the tapestry. The 13 colours are also indicated in the study by Tanja Kohwagner-Nikolai per manus sororum.. Niederschsische Bildstickereien im Klosterstich (1300-1583)

• Ivory 0900 (natur - e.g. peoples faces and buildings)
• Light gold 1413 (gelb - e.g. gold, aura of the saints)
• Dark red 1101 (rot - e.g. clothing)
• Orange 1363 (rosa - e.g. chair of the king, clothing)
• Dark green 1511 (helles blaugrun - e.g. grass)
• Light beech green 1515 (gelbgrun - e.g. trees)
• Dark blue 1007 (dunkelblau - e.g. sky)
• Medium blue 1005 (stahlblau - e.g. roofs, helmet)
• Dark brown 0908 (braun - e.g. dog, horses)
• Mid brown 0907 (graubraun - e.g. horses)
• Mid Corn 1412 (beige - e.g. clothes)
• Dark peach 1201 (lila - e.g. eastern faces, soul)
• Black 0503 (schwartz - e.g. details faces, saddle)

The 1 metre black wool test on the saddle of the horse with the knight.

Our next problem was to determine how much or each colour we would need. Therefore we tested the area 1 meter thread would cover in the cloister stitch. We could make 2.6 square cm with 1 meter thread. Now we only needed to know how many square cm each colour contained in the tapestry. To do this we photoshopped our photo of the tapestry. First the colours were faded, then the identical colours were made of the same shade. After this, a colleague of mine used a program to count the pixels of each colour and calculate the percentage of that colour. Knowing the size of the tapestry this was converted to square cm, and then meters wool.

The centre piece of the St. Thomasteppich with the 13 colours made identical. There is in fact a 14th colour here, as we did give the aura of Jesus and Saint Thomas a brighter shade of yellow. However, we will not use a different colour for the embroidery.

We did not measure the colours at the sides of the tapestry, because we wish to add some other images there that have something to do with our woodworking guild and the city of Nimweghen. As we do not yet know how it would look like and what colours we would use, it is impossible to count colours or order wool for the sides.

Interestingly, all this counting gives an indication of how much wool is used for the (centre of the) original tapestry (78,120 square cm): more than 30 kilometres! (not counting the small amount of wool on the back of the tapestry and the faded colours on the faces). As our tapestry will be half-sized, this would mean 7,511 meter for us. Of course we will order more wool to be sure to have enough wool of the same colour bath. Below is a table showing how much of each colours is used in the tapestry. The two types of yellow have been added together for our tapestry.

Colour	%	Original (metres)	Guild (metres)
Black	0.9	270	67
Ivory	31.1	9,661	2,415
Dark green	9.6	2,885	712
Dark blue	21.9	6,580	1,645
Licht blue	3.5	1,052	263
Saintly gold	1.0	300
Yellow	3.8	1,142	360
Dark brown	4.6	1,382	345
Light brown	1.4	421	105
Light green	6.6	1,983	500
Beige	3.5	1,052	263
Dark red	9.3	2,794	698
Orange	4.7	1,412	353
Lila	0.6	180	45
Total colours	102.5	31,114		7,778
Total	100.0	30,046		7,511

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