Patricia Esquivias’s tapestry pays tribute to the craft of shepherding, and she was therefore in no doubt that Transhumance Day 2020 should be made of wool.

During the planning stage, she also considered the possibility of using a knotted weave – specifically, the ‘simple’ or ‘Spanish’ knot technique. This would have heightened the tactile quality of the wool and in some way evoked the fleece itself. Ultimately, however, she opted for a tapestry weave, as being more suitable for the many inscriptions featured in the final design.[1]

Inscriptions play a key role in defining the border running around the scene, a traditional feature of such tapestries. Across the top, it reads Fiesta de la trashumancia (Transhumance Day); at the bottom, LA MESTA, estudio de la historia económica de España 1273–1836 (LA MESTA, A Study in Spanish Economic History 1273–1836). And the vertical side texts are as follows: on the left, the dates ‘1920’ and ‘2020’, and on the right, the name ‘Julius Klein’. All are written in a style typical of handwritten ballpoint notes.

Agar Ledo[2] explains that the entire inscription was inspired by the centenary in 2020 of the first edition of Harvard professor Julius Klein’s work on the Mesta,[3] the title of which appears at the bottom of the border in Spanish translation. Klein wrote a seminal study of the ‘Honrado Concejo de la fiesta de Pastores’, the centuries-old shepherds’ guild founded in 1273 by Alfonso X the Wise and dissolved in 1836. The council’s main function was to regulate grazing. For this purpose, it established and defined the transhumance routes, known as cañadas (livestock trails), some of which were given royal status.

Bearing in mind the importance of the Mesta for transhumance and Klein’s contributions to historical research on the subject (he cast new light on the fundamental role played in Spanish livestock farming by the Merino sheep imported from the Maghreb), the inclusion of these references needs no further explanation.[4]

The central part of the tapestry is taken up by a series of icons forming a sort of kaleidoscopic image of the theme: a tribute to pastoralism and wool, filtered through the artist’s sensory experiences at the Banco de España and the Mesta in Madrid.

The bank building is represented by its iconic trading floor, with its imposing Art Deco stained-glass ceiling panel, between 1933 and 1934 by the firm Maumejean to a design by Alberto Martorell. This ensemble – one of the most important of its kind in Europe[5] – features a set of images extolling labour as the cornerstone of progress. One of the corner spandrels includes a figure of a shepherd with his flock, representing the labour of shepherding.

An echo of this image can be seen in the top left-hand corner of Esquivias’s tapestry, where Martorell’s shepherd and sheep are readily recognisable. Here they are framed by dynamic lines evoking the structure of the stained-glass panel and the lead came. The two rows of semicircular and mixtilinear arches just beneath echo the ones overlooking the bank’s trading floor.

The transhumance festival itself is represented by the other images in this kaleidoscope of pictures. Madrid’s Gran Vía is depicted in the form of two stylised representations of buildings linked together by lines, which might reasonably be identified as the Capitol Cinema (in the background) and the Metropolis.

A flock of sheep occupies the centre of the picture. Just like a tuft of wool on a spinning wheel, the sheep emerge and are channelled along this urban cañada. They appear to have reached Calle Alcalá, and some have turned off to enter into the pen formed by the Banco de España trading hall, with its distinctive cross-shaped counters and totem-like clock tower in the middle.

Ahead of the flock, a shepherd in the right-hand foreground is shown with his haversack and staff. He is wearing a face mask, a reference to the pandemic declared across Spain in 2020.

The imagery blends real events and visual experiences with dreamlike fantasies. The sheep are shown passing through the bank building, a metaphor for a performative act or theatrical spectacle related to the transhumance that never actually took place. There are several other metaphors in the tapestry,

including the use of gold thread to outline some of the animals and the raw wool employed in the backgrounds. The 23-carat gold braiding alludes to the wealth that the livestock industry generated for the Spanish economy, identified for several centuries as the ‘gold of the Americas’. By using raw wool weaves – in the original undyed natural colour, as is customary – Esquivias draws attention to the raw material and stresses its fundamental importance. Thus, the unbleached taffeta becomes a celebration of the ‘white gold’[6] that was for so long a mainstay of the economy of Castille and Leon.

At the express wish of the artist, the tapestry was woven at the Royal Tapestry Works, in tribute to the centuries-old expertise of its weavers in transforming Merino wool through the art and magic of the loom. In acknowledgement, the weaver’s mark of the Tapestry Works, used on tapestries, bedspreads and carpets, is featured here on the shepherd’s garb, making it look as though the shepherd were wearing the same embroidered logo to be found on uniforms worn at the manufactory. The artist’s intention seems clear: to treat shepherds and weavers equally as wool workers.

The quality of the craftsmanship shown in the fabric does justice to the well-earned reputation of the weavers of Atocha. The weavers have successfully met the challenge of faithfully reproducing the graphic qualities of the ballpoint pen used in Esquivias’s apparently simple pattern, using their shuttles to create the visual impression of an irregular ink stroke in the blue-dyed wool. Only on very close examination do we see the inevitable staggering of the wefts woven with taffeta weave.

We are unusually fortunate in knowing the names of the individual weavers. They were José Ignacio García and José Luis Sánchez, both highly experienced craftsmen who learned the craft at the Fundación de Gremios, going to work at the Royal Tapestry Works when the Foundation closed. They were assisted by Cristina Hurtado, a young weaver who trained at the factory’s own workshop school.

The tapestry was commissioned by the Banco de España in 2020 and was produced between mid-September and 6 November that year, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. Just like the shepherd depicted in the tapestry, Patricia Esquivias had to wear a face mask while cutting the final threads securing the tapestry to the loom.[7]

Bibliography

Agar Ledo. Patricia Esquivias. Transhumance Day 2020. ‘Sobre la obra’. Colección Banco de España At https://coleccion.bde.es/wca/es/secciones/coleccion/obras/_esta-de-la-trashumancia-2020-t_29.html.

Víctor Nieto Alcaide (ed.). La vidriera del Patio de Operaciones del Banco de España, Madrid: Banco de España, 2019.

[1] Having previously completed three tapestry-related projects in workshops in Mexico (Cuadro del mar, Cardón cardinal and Reja Barrera), Esquivias was very familiar with the technical aspects involved.

[2] Agar Ledo. Patricia Esquivias. Fiesta de la trashumancia 2020. ‘Sobre la obra’. Colección Banco de España at https://collection.bde.es/wca/en/sections/collection/works/Fiesta-dela-trashumancia-2020-t_29.html. Last accessed on 13 July 2024.

[3] Julius Klein. The Mesta: A Study in Spanish Economic History 1273–1836, Harvard: University Press, 1920.

[4] Esquivias herself has said that she chanced upon Klein’s book in the year of its centenary when she was researching the commission from the Banco de España.

[5] Víctor Nieto Alcaide (ed.). La vidriera del Patio de Operaciones del Banco de España, Madrid: Banco de España, 2019.

[6] Agar Ledo, op. cit.

[7] It is customary at the Royal Tapestry Works to mark the final cutting of the warp threads securing the tapestry or carpet to the loom with a special ceremony.

Agar Ledo