Men of the cloth

Adam Dant on his personal mission to resurrect the lost art of the painter-stainers

THE ART OF THE PAINTER-STAINER IS A LOST ART. IN COMMON WITH THE ARCANE ACTIVITIES OF THE patten-maker, the fan-maker, and the fletcher, one is unlikely to find oneself sitting next to practitioners of such “misteries” at their appropriate livery company dinners. As a newly adopted freeman of the Worshipful Company of Painter-Stainers, I was keen to discover more about my illustrious forebears, being the anonymous craftsmen whose 16 tonnes of painted linen cloths provided the backdrop in 1520 to the meeting of Henry Vlll and Francis l of France on the Field of the Cloth of Gold (below). Despite their significant contribution to the fabric of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century life, the tangible legacy of the painter-stainer is pretty scant. The company’s own history barely mentions this aspect of their…

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The Critic (Digital) - 1 Issue, February 2025

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