The Collaborative International Dictionary
Bayeux tapestry \Ba`yeux" tap"es*try\ A piece of linen about 1 ft. 8 in. wide by 213 ft. long, covered with embroidery representing the incidents of William the Conqueror's expedition to England, preserved in the town museum of Bayeux in Normandy. It is probably of the 11th century, and is attributed by tradition to Matilda, the Conqueror's wife.
Wikipedia
The Bayeux Tapestry ( or , ; , , or La telle du conquest) is an embroidered cloth nearly long and tall, which depicts the events leading up to the Norman conquest of England concerning William, Duke of Normandy, and Harold, Earl of Wessex, later King of England, and culminating in the Battle of Hastings.
According to Sylvette Lemagnen, conservator of the tapestry:
The tapestry consists of some fifty scenes with Latin tituli, embroidered on linen with coloured woollen yarns. It is likely that it was commissioned by Bishop Odo, William's half-brother, and made in England—not Bayeux—in the 1070s. In 1729 the hanging was rediscovered by scholars at a time when it was being displayed annually in Bayeux Cathedral. The tapestry is now exhibited at the Musée de la Tapisserie de Bayeux in Bayeux, Normandy, France
The designs on the Bayeux Tapestry are embroidered rather than woven, so that it is not technically a tapestry. Nevertheless, it is always referred to as such. The tapestry can be seen as the final and best known work of Anglo-Saxon art, and though made after the Conquest was both made in England and firmly in an Anglo-Saxon tradition, points now accepted by French art-historians. Such tapestries adorned both churches and wealthy houses in England, though at 0.5 by 68.38 metres (1.6 by 224.3 ft, and apparently incomplete) the Bayeux Tapestry is exceptionally large. Only the figures and decoration are embroidered, on a background left plain, which shows the subject very clearly and was necessary to cover very large areas.
Usage examples of "bayeux tapestry".
The Bayeux tapestry shows him embarking at Bosham, and he is taking with him hawks and hounds.
It could almost have been a piece of the Bayeux tapestry, or a medieval shroud.
A really loving wife might work for ten or twelve years to create a tapestry showing how her husband had worked up from the lowly post of office boy to be vice-president in charge of the mail-order department, along the lines of the Bayeux Tapestry.
The pattern was similar in design to the Bayeux Tapestry that illustrated the Battle of Hastings in 1066.
It was made from a couple of yards of the Bayeux Tapestry, and had gold handles, and a leather strap that went over the shoulder.
The comet was duly noted in a newspaper of the time, the Bayeux Tapestry.
Beam Piper's Terro-Human Future History will stand as the Bayeux Tapestry of science fiction histories.