Dovecot Tapestry Studio, Edinburgh

When you are travelling there are serendipitous finds/happenings that just lift the whole experience onto another plane. Often they’re to do with conversations in passing, those brief interactions with strangers that reaffirm our human bonds.

Once, in Canberra, I happened across an exhibition of Natalia Goncharova’s costume designs for Diagliev’s Ballet Russe – a moment that has resonated ever since. Yesterday, in Edinburgh, we shared a day full of these sorts of experiences. It nearly killed us, but was undoubtedly worth the pain.

Somewhere, prior to leaving New Zealand, I had read about the Dovecot Tapestry Studio and thought it might be worth a visit. So we made our way uphill from Waverley Station (having commuted from Stirling where we are based) to Infirmary Road where we found the studio housed in what had once been Edinburgh’s public baths. A coffee in the lovely adjoining Leo’s cafe and then we climbed the stairs to the viewing gallery from where visitors can see the whole tapestry studio and watch the weavers at work. This is a studio with an illustrious history that makes seriously large public commissions. Around the gallery walls were information panels about the studio and the conversion of the baths; also information about some of the recent commissions completed including a huge frieze, designed by Victoria Crowe for the Leathersellers’ Company in London. The work was sumptuous, its scale awe-inspiring. And I walked round with a dirty great big grin on my face!