This is a fine vintage museum-quality tapesty by the Bulgarian textile artist, Maria Tzanova-Kirkova.
Not much is known about her in the UK- but she does seem to have an artistic reputation in Eastern Europe. There is another tapesty by her in the collection of the Museum of Applied Arts in Budapest. It is very similiar in style to this one - with the addition of a band of small brightly coloured geometric shapes in the design. She is a member of Support of Art in Bulgaria Foundation. She also designed the blue tapestry as a section that she created for the Web of Europe project. I have taken three images of this and included these at the end of my listing.
The Web of Europe project was launched by the Budapest-based Ildikó Dobrányi Foundation in conjunction with the Hungarian Cultural Institute in Brussels in 2011. The project was the production of a collective tapestry based on the seventeenth-century Brussels tapestry "Mercury Hands Over the Infant Bacchus to the Nymphs", which is in the Museum of Applied Arts in Budapest. The 2011 tapestry was a collaboration of twenty-seven artists who each had to re-interpret and re-weave twenty-seven small parts featured in the antique textile. There is a lot of documentation about this interesting project available online.
My tapestry is beautifully made and probably dates to 1980s / early 1990s. I have owned it since the 1990s. It a lovely piece of textile art - and a rare, highly decorative item. It has never been on display - and all the colours are nice and fresh. The textile is clean and is in the condition as made. There would have been a lot of skill and time taken to make this fine piece. You wont find another like it!
We have a central abstracted landscape image as a panel in the centre of the tapestry. This has a suggestion of long grasses with the addition of lots of long green hanging threads. The main penel is surrounded by a more rustic edge all around - made of chunky woven hessian threads - and at each edge are two decorative edges with finely woven diagonal black and white stripes. The tapestry has an overturn to the back - you would put a rod through this to allow you to hang the textile on your wall for display as an artwork.
There is a little silk label on the reverse inscribed with the artist's name. This certainly helped me with identifcation.
Dimensions: The drop of the tapestry is 22 3/4 inches (58 cm). The width is 16 inches (40.5 cm).
It will be carefully packed and sent to you with Royal Mail (Medium) Tracked and Signed for post. It will be fully insured in transit.