French Tapestry - The Gathering

Outside the cottage the music has already started, and half the village has spilled into the clearing to dance. Found in Avignon, woven in the early twentieth century in soft browns and faded gold. Scenes like this one descend from David Teniers the Younger, the Flemish painter whose seventeenth-century village festivals were copied by weavers so often that his name became shorthand for the whole genre. Sylvie hangs it at the top of the stairs, where you pass it every morning before the day has decided what it will be.