Notebook – The Lady and the Unicorn
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- Size: 20.5 × 14.0 × 0.8 cm
- Cover: softcover
- Pages: 80 lined pages
- Closure: blue elastic band
- Weight: 130 g
- Country of manufacture: the Netherlands
A softcover notebook featuring an image from the medieval The Lady and the Unicorn tapestry series on the cover. Against a red background filled with flowers and animals, a lady stands between a lion and a unicorn. A blue elastic band keeps the notebook closed in your bag.
Background to the image
The Lady and the Unicorn, or La Dame à la licorne, is a series of six tapestries dating from around 1500. Woven from wool and silk, they are held at the Musée de Cluny in Paris, France’s national museum of the Middle Ages. The series is known for its detailed human figures and abundant floral and animal motifs.
The notebook cover features Le Goût, the tapestry depicting the sense of taste. The lady takes a sweet from a dish held by her companion to offer it to the parrot perched on her hand. A monkey visible in the foreground is also eating a treat. Five of the tapestries in the series depict the senses, while several interpretations have been proposed for the meaning of the sixth.
Symbolic meaning
A central theme of the image is our relationship with the world through the senses. The gestures and animal figures depicting taste express themes of pleasure, desire and experience. The imagery on the notebook can also be approached as a way of directing attention towards what we notice in everyday life and what feels personally meaningful.
In medieval European imagery, the unicorn was associated with purity, innocence and untameability. It was also regarded as a creature whose horn was believed to have the power to purify poisons. In this tapestry series, the mythical unicorn appears alongside people and familiar animals, as part of a world that is both perceived through the senses and imagined.
