In my previous post about my latest altered book, I mentioned that one of the pages – the fox page – reminded me of the Millefleur(s) art style. Millefleurs means “thousand flowers” in French and was a style using many flowers in the background of European tapestries between 1480 and 1520. The style was brought back into fashion by William Morris and his company Morris & Co.
I looked again at tapestries and particularly like Tapestry: Greenery designed by John Henry Dearle for Morris & Co. It hangs in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, US and features deer, rabbits and a fox beneath chestnut, oak and pear trees:
![Tapestry Greenery](https://www.alexifrancisillustrations.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/greenery-tapestry-1.jpg)
I love botanical detail in tapestries and paintings, especially with my recent rekindled interest in plants. i like the way individual flower species are depicted. I first really took note of millefleur in Botticelli’s Primavera in which there are about 190 species of flowering plants depicted and many have symbolic meanings:
![Primavera - Botticelli](https://www.alexifrancisillustrations.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/primavera-in-book.jpg)
I have decided to write/illustrate another little book that I’m titling The Tapestry Fox inspired by Tapestry Greenery and of course, the foxes that live around my way.
![The Tapestry Fox sketchbook](https://www.alexifrancisillustrations.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/tapestry-fox-sketchbook.jpg)
The fox as totem animal is coming back into my life. it is a good luck animal for me. I’ll follow it wherever it takes me. I’ve worked on a few ideas for the book:
![Fox in the Woodland](https://www.alexifrancisillustrations.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/tahe-tapestry-fox-fox-in-wood-new500-600x415.jpg)
![The Tapestry Fox Cover Idea](https://www.alexifrancisillustrations.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/the-tapestry-fox-with-words.jpg)
In the first picture above I’ve added teasel, bramble, oak and hornbeam – I try and add plants that can be identified. i haven’t managed the sinewy trunks of hornbeam. I particularly like adding bramble (of the rose family there are over 300 species in the UK and deer love it so you can often tell if a deer has passed by the bitten ends of new bramble shoots. Bramble was used for fencing where barned wire is used now and then there are blackberries! A great plant!)
While on the fox trail, I’ve been experimenting with the idea of millefleur and foxes at the woodland edge in a larger, A3 picture. I’ve called it Millefeuilles Fox – Thousand Leaves Fox:
![Millefeuilles Fox](https://www.alexifrancisillustrations.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/millefeuilles-fox600.jpg)
In the picture stars are sprinkled among the leaves and plants so the sky becomes the land and the land sky. I like to think it might be an allegory of some sort with a hidden meaning :)
I’m looking forward to visiting the woodland edges, making sketches, taking photos and gathering a few plant specimens. With spring comes primrose, white dead nettle, yellow archangel, lords and ladies, stitchwort, herb robert, red campion, nettles….