Tallinn City Museum lecture: rare tapestries and the colours of early modern Tallinn

The joint project of the University of Tartu, the Estonian Academy of Arts and the Tallinn City Museum, “Global and Local: Priceless Tapestries of Early Modern Tallinn”, is studying rare 16th-century tapestries kept at the Tallinn City Museum over the course of a year.

The project is presented and its results summarised in a series of lectures in the autumn season of 2026 at the Tallinn City Museum, Vene 17. The lectures take place once a month on Tuesdays at 17:30 in the museum’s education room.

1 December: Hannes Vinnal. Global or local? The colours of Tallinn tapestries at the turning point of a widening world.

Studying Tallinn’s tapestries offers a valuable opportunity to look at a turbulent period in the history of European colour. In the 16th and 17th centuries many new dyes came into use. This was linked to the discovery of the New World and to the sea routes to Asia. New colonial goods began to compete with European home-produced goods. That is why colours are a sweet material for studying the history of globalisation, both its beauty and its pain. Tallinn’s tapestries sit precisely at this turning point in the mid-16th century.

When looking at Tallinn’s tapestries, it is also important to look at the history of local textile dyeing practices, a field that has so far been little studied. How did the art of colour develop in our region in the 16th and 17th centuries? This helps us understand the importance and meaning of such colourful luxury objects in the context of Tallinn, and how they were received locally.

PROJECT PRESENTATION

The project “Global and Local: Priceless Tapestries of Early Modern Tallinn” brings together the expertise of art historians, historians, scientists, curators and conservators. The focus is on tapestries with King Solomon and plant motifs, commissioned by the Tallinn council, and on the altar cloth, or antependium, of St Olaf’s Church, commissioned by the town councillor Lutke van Oyten.

The works were made in the 16th century in tapestry workshops in Enghien and Brussels in the Netherlands, from where Europe’s leading dynasties also ordered tapestries. Rare tapestries already belonged to the most valuable art commissions at the time of their making.

“It is a miracle that such old, masterfully made and materially valuable objects have survived in Tallinn,” says the project leader, Kerttu Palginõmm, researcher of textile history at the Institute of History and Archaeology of the University of Tartu.

The research project uses interdisciplinary methods and serves the aim of preserving, conserving and, in future, exhibiting a unique piece of European cultural heritage.

Time and place: 1 December 2026, 17:30, Tallinn City Museum, Vene 17, Tallinn (education room).