At least the irony isn't lost.

I was going to call this post "Karmar" as in karma, but referencing how British people tend add "r's" to the end of some words, but then I realized that this story is more about comeuppance which is totally different from karma and I'd just be appropriating a cultural concept that doesn't belong to me and it was just irony all the way down. Which brings us to sixteenth century English tapestries.

Pictured: a typical British person, seen here sipping tea
while considering which country he'd like to take over next.

Above: bo-ring.

So, back in September, I braved parking in San Francisco to go see an exhibit about Tudor England at the Legion of Honor. And while there--huh? Why? I don't know, I find it interesting. People develop weird interests as they get older and--don't judge me, at least it's not bird watching. Anyway, one of the tapestries is called Saint Paul Directing the Burning of the Heathen Books because brevity was evidently not valued in English Renaissance tapestry making. 

It does what it says on the tin, and I work in a bookstore and disapprove of violence against books, so I selfied it.

Am I saying that right? "Selfied it?" Anyone know a zoomer?

It's weird how a Florida PTA meeting
made it's way into a 16th century tapestry.

SPDTBOTHB or, "the tapestry" as I think I'll refer to it form here on out, was, along with the rest of the exhibit at the end of its tour and would, unbeknownst to me, return to its owner in Spain for some reason. But then today I was listening to a podcast called Not Just the Tudors--what? I said don't judge me--and the episode was entitled Saving Henry VIII's Lost Tapestry and get this: the titular lost tapestry was the tapestry! You know, SPDTBOTHB? The one I selfied in front of? Wait, that can't be right. 

I'll just leave this closeup of
Henry VIII's codpiece here.

It was commissioned by noted King and sociopath Henry VIII as part of an effort to give him self religious cred, and show up his rival Francis I of France. Evidently they had some kind of weird tapestry collecting thing going. Bro behavior is evidently transhistorical, but whatever, doesn't matter, the point is it's huge (19'x11'), and expensive. It cost two thousand pounds which is like two million dollars in our future money, so it's kind of weird that it, and the other tapestries in the set, just disappeared in 1770. Well, disappeared as in someone took it.

A suitable British institution being one with
sufficient portraits of Queen Elizabeth on hand.

Centuries later in the 1960's, some rando in Barcelona bought it and it's been in private hands ever since. Fortunately someone who knew what they were looking at put it together that this was Henry VIII's lost piece of oneupmanship. The Spanish Government has an anti-export rule that says it can't leave the country, but they're apparently willing to make an exception for "a suitable British institution" that also is willing and able to come up with four million pounds. Yes, of money. Cor blimey, amiright? 

Enter the Auckland Project and their Faith Museum in Bishop Auckland which, I know, I know, in America, if you call something a "faith museum," it conjures images of cavemen riding dinosaurs on their way to hear Jesus's sermon on the Second Amendment. But in Britain it's an actual museum of the history of religion in Britain, and they'd like to put this tapestry on display for all to enjoy rather than see it go up onto some rich person's bathroom wall like Oprah's Klimt. 

I don't care how many top
men are working on it.

And I'm all for it. I might even kick them a few dollars. I'm not English, or religious, and I have no personal connection to this particular tapestry beyond seeing it in an exhibition, but it bothers me whenever I hear of art or artifacts of significant historical or cultural significance just sitting in someone's private collection. It should be in a museum where the public and academics can have access to it. But that sound your hearing? That's the sound of rich and inescapable historical irony. 

The irony of a British museum trying to scrape together enough money to buy a cultural treasure back from a foreign owner. Sure, it's not precisely the same as colonizers helping themselves a nation's grave goods or looting in the name of the British East India Company, but it does feel like a smidge of comeuppance.  

You guys going to think about maybe handing back some of those artifacts
in the British Museum that maybe don't belong to--no? Really? Wow...k...