A few months ago I was reading up on the stunning medieval tapestries at the NY Met. How beautiful they are! The amount of clever designing, experimenting and yes, tedious work required is mind numbing. And, as usual, I found myself wondering about this process and how it could relate to baseball. There is not a deep textile tradition in sports art and little in the way of large scale imagery.
To make a long story short, I began to research the process in some depth. It was soon apparent that old style jacquard weaving is an art that has almost disappeared. These days if you want a rug or wall hanging it is nearly always made utilizing digital printing on artificial material. Some of it looks…okay. But the real thing? You’ll have to dig deep for a traditional supplier.
After a great deal of time I have found a maker of hand-knotted carpets and we have already started on our first collaboration. For the design I’ve selected one of my favorite Helmar art cards from the Boston Garter series, Joe Wood. Here is the image:
It takes a few months of hard work to make one of these. In my next post I’ll talk more about the process.
Charles Mandel
Helmar Sports Cards and Baseball History 
John, please do email me at cmandel@helmarbrewing.com
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I just discovered your fascinating cards and website. Strange coincidence that I was working on that very site with public domain images of medieval tapestries for a “haunted mansion” that I’ve been writing/building for my role-playing D&D group. Small world! I really want to see what your wild imagination comes up with on this front. Cheers!
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John, if you have any images of your haunted mansion I’d enjoy taking a look. It is a small world, isn’t it?
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It’s more written than it is drawn, at this point. I have completed 63 pages of description so far (with a hundred more pages of treasures, characters, rumors, and the like), and a set of a half-dozen maps of the six interior levels of the place, drawing inspiration from the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, North Carolina. I’ll be happy to send you files of what I’ve got so far, if you’re sincerely interested – just drop me a line at my e-mail (as I don’t know how to append a photo here). I do see what we are both doing as strangely similar; we both enjoy crafting artificial realities which emulate the real world. I picked up one of your “Hey-Batter!” Pete Gray cards and the verisimilitude you bring to the piece is astonishing – the sight, the feel, the scent of the thing. In a world where art meets commerce, you fall so heavily on the side of the art that the commerce seems a sweet by-product. My best regards, good sir.
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Hi Kevin, no I don’t have pricing yet. I still have to navigate through customs duties, shipping expenses and who knows what else. This one will probably go to auction if I don’t keep it myself.
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This sounds great! Do you have any idea of pricing yet?
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