Yorkshire man creates tapestry of Prince Charles’s watercolour
A YORKSHIRE man’s tapestry depicting a watercolour by Prince Charles was presented to the royal.
A woven interpretation of Charles’s work Abandoned Cottage On The Isle of Stroma, Caithness was crafted by Ben Hymers and is set to take pride of place at the Castle of Mey, where the Prince is regularly in residence and which was restored by his grandmother, Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother.
Mr Hymers, 29, now works at Dovecot Studios in Edinburgh and took eight months to complete the complex interpretation after loaning the Prince’s original watercolour from Clarence House in London.
He said: “I’m proud that I managed to stick it out. I was looking
to represent a watercolour in wool, which was a challenge.
“You don’t want a slavish copy of the watercolour, as that’s like translating a novel through an online tool; you don’t capture the essence. Instead, I wanted to accurately show the techniques used by the Prince in a tapestry, to represent the idea of the layers of colour he used and the quick strokes he applied.”
Originally from Otley, Mr Hymers attended Prince Henry’s Grammar School.
Mr Hymers went on to study History of Art at University of Edinburgh and, upon graduating, worked as a semi-professional magician.
“I really wanted to make things with my hands, and the beauty of tapestry is that, little by little, you can see you are producing something,” he said.
He recently completed a threeyear apprenticeship under Dovecot’s master weaver Naomi Robertson.