Hanging by Ann West

Available for over a year

Cathy FitzGerald invites you to discover new details in old masterpieces, using your phone, tablet or computer. The average length of time spent looking at a painting in a gallery is 28 seconds. On Moving Pictures, we like to take a little longer. Each thirty-minute episode is devoted to a single artwork - and you're invited to look as well as listen, by following a link to an extraordinary high-resolution image made by Google Arts and Culture. Zoom in and you can see more than the artist - the pores of the canvas, the sweep of individual brushstrokes, the shimmer of pointillist dots. In the first programme of this series, stroll along the high-street of a market town in Regency England - as imagined in a one-of-a-kind patchwork hanging, held in the collection of the V&A Museum. This needlework masterpiece features tiny applique scenes of everyday life - children flying kites, chimney sweeps heading home from work, a fishwife off to market. Cathy asks if one of the little characters might be the maker herself. Interviewees: Jenny Lister, Kerry Taylor, Deb McGuire, Linda Seward, Tracy Chevalier Producer and Presenter: Cathy FitzGerald A White Stiletto production for BBC Radio 4 Ann West, Coverlet (c) Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Acquired with the support of the Friends of the V&A.