Shakespeare’s Birthplace

Project Type: Painted Cloths

Client: Shakespeare’s Birthplace Trust

Location: Stratford-upon-Avon, England

Date: 2000

Artists: Melissa White, David Cutmore and team

Availability: Museum open to the public

Wall-to-Wall Painted cloths for four rooms in William Shakespeare’s childhood home in the heart of Stratford-upon-Avon.

This was a pivotal and career defining project for me that spanned four years as commission funding was released in stages for an ambitious re-display project at this much loved historic site.

Intensive and thorough research was carried out by experts in the field of Tudor interior decoration; David Cutmore and Victor Chinnery. Former Museum Curator Ann Donnelly oversaw the project and a team of artists, myself included carried out the painting under David’s guidance. This was the project that lured me into the world of Tudor wall painting. This is where I learned to read Elizabethan wall paintings; mix pigments; prepare rabbit skin glue; stretch and tack linen canvas and wield a brush in the manner of the painter-stainers of the Sixteenth Century.

The Brief

When the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust invited craftsman David Cutmore to join their re-display project he and his team of decorative artists got to work producing a set of painted cloths. They replicated wall paintings that Shakespeare would have seen in nearby towns like Oxford.

Using traditional materials (earth pigments & size) and techniques (stencils & templates) the team stretched linen on huge frames and painted floor-to-ceiling cloths for four room including the Birthroom.

The Design

The museum’s interiors had whitewashed walls and exposed oak beams like many timber-framed houses across the country. It is now known that rooms were far more colourful with elaborately painted walls and often ceilings, floor cloths, furniture etc.

The museum’s transformation challenged visitors’ expectations but ultimately showed how the house might have looked when Shakespeare lived in it.

The finished cloths were installed by David and Melissa in 2000. Each cloth was painstakingly trimmed to size as they nailed the linen around the battened edges of the walls (below right)

The Process

At my studio we built a huge, wooden stretcher frame that could be raised and lowered on industrial pulleys. This allowed us to stretch and prime the linen horizontally on the floor then winch the frame back up to its vertical position for painting.

Like tailoring a suit we mapped out each section of the room and painted the design in pieces to fit the walls perfectly. Where the wonky walls met the ceiling we had to adjust the painted frieze to follow the undulations. This required surveying the room by measuring many points from a fixed horizontal laser line.

Having primed the canvas with rabbit skin glue for a drum-tight surface, we then applied a base coat of distemper. Next we made glue tempera with lamp black pigment with which to paint the design. Using an OHP to project the design ensures accuracy but also maintains the spirit of freehand painting and nuance.

As each panel was completed it was cut from the frame, rolled and stored until the whole set was complete and ready to be sent to Stiffkey Old Hall. Once there it was meticulously installed by professional fabric-wallers who used matching braid to cover joins and conceal stapling.

I’ve always loved this bold, voluptuous multivine design. However, the dark black lines of the original wall painting could overwhelm across four walls of a bedroom. Softening the black to a subtle charcoal allowed the design more elegance and room to breath.

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