2-365-601 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Loom of Penelope, from the Chuisi Vase, Etruscan, c400 BC (1930). Penelope with her son, Telemachus. A scene from the Odyssey. While waiting for the return of her missing husband, Odysseus, Penelope delayed various suitors, claiming that she had first to finish weaving a burial shroud for Odysseus's elderly father, Laertes. Every night she would unpick the shroud, meaning that the task would never be finished. A print from A History of Tapestry, by WG Thomson, Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1930.