On the occasion of the National Museum’s 160th anniversary, for the first time the precious treasures of Icelandic art history, all fifteen of the surviving Refil tapestries, are together in one place at the exhibition, Creative Hands. The oldest garments are from just before 1400, the most recently created one is almost 300 years younger from 1677. Nine are preserved at the National Museum, the others are on loan from the Louvre in Paris, the Nationalmuseet in Copenhagen and from the Rijksmuseum Twenthe in Enschede, in the Netherlands. As it says in the exhibition catalog, refil sewing is a type of sewing that derives its name from the word refill. Reflils were decorative tents made of wool or linen that were used for covering the insides both churches and people’s homes in the past. Refil stitch is just one of the embroidery stitches used in the Middle Ages and is a variation of embroidery known as the laid stitch. These masterpieces of medieval Icelandic art were created by skilled women who possessed knowledge and training in weaving and embroidery. The exhibition is the result of decades of research by Elsa E. Guðjónsson (1924-2010) on needlework. Elsa worked at the National Museum of Iceland for more than three decades. On the occasion of the exhibition, a magnificent 400-page book, Með verkum handanna, published by the National Museum, by Elsa, will be published.
Photographs & text: Páll Stefánsson
Reykjavík 08/11/2023 – A7C : FE 1.4/24mm GM
