Big Pit, Blaenavon, Recreated by the Mad Mountain Stitchers

Big Pit, Blaenavon, tapestry. Copyright: Mad Mountain Stitchers

Using the rich and freely-available resources of the National Monuments Record of Wales, a group of highly-creative, textile artists based in the Brecon Beacons have recently created an incredible tapestry of Big Pit, Blaenavon (NPRN:433).  Working under the collective name of the Mad Mountain Stitchers, Margitta Davis, Ann Notley, Penny Turnbull, Milli Stein and Jan Winstanley, have ingeniously woven their own distinct individual styles cleverly together to produce this wonderful tapestry based on images from the Royal Commission’s archive.

A spokeswoman from the group explained:

“Working on Bit Pit, in various media, was a fun challenge especially as the site is not far from our work place. We were, therefore, able to visit many times to get a feel of the place. There were so many ideas; they just kept coming so we went for it!

Amongst the materials used were felt, organza, calico, cottons, dyed and painted leather, beads, silk tops, voiles, embroidery wire, various threads, some space dyed and variegated etc. Techniques used were appliqué, stumpwork, embellishing, hand and machine embroidery, needlelace, stencilling etc.
We would like to acknowledge the support given by everyone at Big Pit, especially Kathryn Stowers. Images supplied by the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales were invaluable”.

The National Monuments Record of Wales (NMRW) holds the national collection of information about the historic environment of Wales from the earliest times to the present day. It includes almost 2, 000,000 photographs, over 125,000 drawings, over 32,000 archived maps, and over 530,000 pages of text and reports. An increasing amount of this material is available on Coflein, our on-line database. In addition the Royal Commission welcomes enquiries about its collections and offers a free public enquiry service.


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