1 of 6
Six woven banners (5’ 6” x 3’ 6” each) hang in procession, welcoming visitors to The Dinner Party. Designed by Chicago, the tapestries repeat the red, black, and gold tones associated with The Dinner Party and incorporate motifs found throughout the piece, such as triangular, floral, and abstracted butterfly forms. After painting the images on paper and selecting the thread colors, Chicago transferred her designs to graph paper, creating cartoons (patterns weavers use), which were then attached to the back of the warped looms.
The Entry Banners were woven at the San Francisco Tapestry Workshop, the first workshop in America to provide training in Aubusson tapestry technique, a high-warp (or vertical) weaving popular during the Renaissance. Judy Chicago was inspired to use Renaissance pictorial weaving when she discovered that women were prohibited from working on the high-warp looms. Custom-built looms were designed by Jean Pierre Larochette, director of the San Francisco Tapestry Workshop, and built by Ken Gilliam. These looms allowed The Dinner Party weavers, who were all trained at the Workshop, to see the designs as they worked, a method not afforded early Aubusson weavers who worked from behind the looms. This change was in keeping with Chicago’s feminist principles, which involved respect for the weavers’ agency in translating the artist’s images into thread.
Woven into the banners are a series of phrases intended to convey Chicago’s vision for a equalized world, one in which women’s history and perspectives are fully recognized and integrated into all aspects of human civilization. A line from the following text is depicted in each tapestry respectively:
And She Gathered All before Her
And She made for them A Sign to See
And lo They saw a Vision
From this day forth Like to like in All things
And then all that divided them merged
And then Everywhere was Eden Once again
Caption
Judy Chicago American, born 1939. Entry Banners, 1974–1979. Cloth, 5' 6" x 3' 6" each. Brooklyn Museum, Gift of The Elizabeth A. Sackler Foundation, 2002.10-EB. © artist or artist's estate (Photo: Donald Woodman, CUR.2002.10-EB-2_Donald_Woodman_photograph_corrected.jpg)
Artist
Title
Entry Banners
Date
1974–1979
Medium
Cloth
Classification
Dimensions
5' 6" x 3' 6" each
Credit Line
Gift of The Elizabeth A. Sackler Foundation
Accession Number
2002.10-EB
Rights
© artist or artist's estate
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Frequent Art Questions
Can you tell me more about this?
These are the entry banners to The Dinner Party, an installation by Judy Chicago in the triangular room at the center of this gallery space.The banners display excerpts from a poem by Chicago and were embroidered by the same workshop that created the 39 runners on the table in The Dinner Party.Chicago says the poem "reflects my dream of a world made whole by the introduction of feminine values through art."Where are these words from?
These are excerpts from a poem written by Judy Chicago.It reads: And She Gathered All before Her / And She made for them A Sign to See / And lo They saw a Vision / For this day forth Like to like in All things / And then all that divided them merged / And then Everywhere was Eden Once againChicago says, "[The poem] reflects my dream of a world made whole by the introduction of feminine values through art."Thanks!
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