The tapestries woven for Stanmore Hall, in Middlesex, were the realization in a noble medium of one of the high themes of Morris's and Burne-Jones's imagination, the quest for the Holy Grail (fig. 18; cat. nos. 145, 147-51). In the 1850s and early 1860s this and other stories from Malory s Morte d’Arthur had inspired them to produce mainly small, intense Figure 18. Morris & Company. The dining room at Stanmore Hall, Stanmore, Middlesex, showing the first panel of the Quest of the Holy Grail tapestries, The Knights of the Round Table Summoned to the Quest by a Strange Damsel, and two verdures, 1890-94 works — drawings by Burne-Jones, poems by Morris. Then other themes had intervened. Now, entering their sixties, they returned to the tale and set out one of the stories in six tapes- try panels. But it was a story of a peculiar kind. When Edwin Austin Abbey painted the Grail legend for the Boston (Massachusetts) Public Library in the 1890s, he designed six- teen panels with battles and blessings, miracles and adven- tures. He told the story of a quest. Burne-Jones and Morris, by contrast, treated the story as a kind of tableau: two panels for the setting out, followed by The Failure of Sir Lancelot (sex), The Failure of Sir Gawaine (power), the Ship of Solomon (which carries the story over to S arras, the spiritual world), and The Attainment (of the Grail by Sir Galahad, who personified innocence or purity of soul). Malory's wanderings and adventures have nearly all gone. The story is spare and moral, a tale from the end of life. 36