The Conquest Imagined: The Tillett Tapestry and Post-Revolutionary Mexico

FAIN: FB-58229-15

Regina A. Root
College of William and Mary (Williamsburg, VA 23186-0002)

The so-called Tillett tapestry, with an estimated fifty-five million stitches and 106-feet in length, represents chronologically the conquest of Mexico from both indigenous and Spanish points of view. Completed in 1977, it was created by textile designer Leslie Tillett with the collaboration of hundreds of embroiderers in Mexico. This book-length project details the cultural history of this unique artifact, detailing its emergence from the art and textile design movements of post-revolutionary Mexico, the evolution from Tillett's own research and designs from the 1950s and 1960s, numerous border crossings, and its particular role as a tool for cultural diplomacy in the 1980s. Through archival research, oral interviews, analysis of the tapestry and hundreds of prints and paintings, this project represents the first, definitive study of the multivalent Tillett tapestry and opens up new areas of research in the cultural history of design and textile history.

Media Coverage

National Grants let Root explore 'Tillett Tapestry' (Media Coverage)
Author(s): Cortney Lang
Publication: WM News
Date: 7/6/2015
Abstract: This first report describes an original research project made possible by a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
URL: http://www.wm.edu/news/stories/2015/national-grants-let-root-explore-tillett-tapestry123.phphttp://

Associated Products

Imagining Conquest: El Tapiz and Postrevolutionary Mexico (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: Imagining Conquest: El Tapiz and Postrevolutionary Mexico
Author: Regina A. Root
Abstract: This paper examines Leslie Tillett's appropriation of modern aesthetics to tell the story of the Spanish conquest of Mexico in a monumental textile finished in 1977. As a representation of foreign invasion, El Tapiz (copyrighted by Leslie Tillett as The Tillett Tapestry in 1978) brings to light a layered history of the violence and horror of conquest alongside cross-cultural design perspectives that the designer researched meticulously. This paper presents new information about the tapestry that was not known previously and will be published in the digital commons proceedings of the Textile Society of America's 15th Biennial Symposium sponsored by the University of Nebraska Press.
Date: 10/22/2016
Primary URL: http://textilesocietyofamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Print-Program-Outline-090216.pdf
Conference Name: Textile Society of America's 15th Biennial Symposium on Cross-Currents: Land, Labor and the Port

Imagining Conquest: El Tapiz and Postrevolutionary Mexico (Article)
Title: Imagining Conquest: El Tapiz and Postrevolutionary Mexico
Author: Regina A. Root
Abstract: This forthcoming article makes available to scholars worldwide new information about Leslie Tillett's monumental embroidered textile narrating the Spanish conquest of Mexico. As a representation of foreign invasion completed in 1977, this article brings to light a layered history of the violence and horror of conquest alongside cross-cultural design perspectives that Leslie Tillett researched, designed and assembled. It was initially presented at the Textile Society of America's 15th Biennial Symposium titled Cross Currents: Land, Labor and the Port.
Year: 2016
Access Model: open access
Format: Other
Publisher: University of Nebraska Press Digital Commons

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