Photo: 
Tony Antoniou/ British Library
Liberty and embroidery: Magna Carta at 800

Today’s 800th anniversary of the sealing of the Magna Carta is being celebrated with, among other jollities, a pageant, a masquerade, a bespoke cantata, bell-ringing, a flower festival and a river relay on the Thames featuring the queen’s barge, Gloriana. But the most interesting commemoration is a tapestry that replicates the entire Wikipedia article on the Magna Carta, stitched by an army of professional embroiderers along with 36 prisoners, lawyers, journalists and campaigners. Julian Assange, a whistle-blower, stitched “freedom” in the Ecuadorean embassy in London; Edward Snowden, another, did “liberty” in Moscow. Jewel-like illustrations by the Embroiderers’ Guild nestle beside clumsy letters by judges, and the blood of a former editor of the Guardian, who pricked his finger while sewing. “Everybody can contribute, everybody is on the same page,” says Cornelia Parker, who created the embroidery—as, it is to be hoped, are citizens everywhere on the matter of the liberties the Magna Carta embodies.

Jun 15th 2015
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