Alison Watt's giant tapestry for Scottish Opera
28 October 2014
The making of Butterfly
A short film from Dovecot Studios about Alison Watt's tapestry for Scottish Opera.
Painter Alison Watt has spent 18 months collaborating with Dovecot Studios in Edinburgh - the UK's oldest practising tapestry studio – on Butterfly, a huge new piece for Scottish Opera which is to be hung in Glasgow’s Theatre Royal in early 2015.
Inspired by the opera Madama Butterfly, and with the weaving led by Dovecot’s Master Weaver Naomi Robertson, the completed tapestry measures 5.6m x 4.2m and will hang over three floors in the theatre foyer.
Watt said: “Madama Butterfly has always been my inspiration. It's a work which has such an impact on the senses and I wanted to create an emotional landscape with my work; to find a way to evoke the powerful themes of love and loss which pour from Puccini's masterpiece.”
This short film from Dovecot Studios tells the fascinating story of the making of the tapestry.
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