Great North Museum, Newcastle upon Tyne; Free Entry
On display until July 2027
I’ve known that the Bayeux Tapestry was coming to London for well over a year, and it has been open there for viewing for a couple of months now. However, until recently, the fact that Greggs had decided to craft their own Ta-Pastry to celebrate the event had passed me by; perhaps because it was first displayed in London and I’m unfamiliar with that city’s arts scene.
Greggs approached Royal Embroiderers Hawthorn and Heaney; according to an article published in Perspective, the team initially thought it “Sounded like great fun”. They say that their team took over 200 hours to handcraft the tapestry, which contains the six main chapters of the story of Greggs as it went from a local bakery to a national icon.
The initial display of the Ta-Pastry was in the Design Museum in London on the 5th and 6th June 2026, a whole week before the Bayeux Tapestry went on display in the British Museum, and where it remains on display until July 2027. Greggs love a publicity stunt, with this one being impeccably executed and timed in the prelude to such a high-profile exhibition.
The Ta-Pastry has gone on display within the last few weeks at the Hancock (Great North Museum) in Newcastle. However, there is also a replica of the Bayeux tapestry in this museum, located less than thirty metres from the Ta-Pastry; this replica is slightly oversized, with each stitch painstakingly recreated in pen. The whole recreation of the Bayeux Tapestry isn’t unrolled, however, with just a couple of key parts of the story on open display behind glass. The image above shows the part of the tapestry (drawing) which corresponds to the coronation of King Harold in 1066 and also has Halley’s comet in the top border above.
The Ta-Pastry is stylistically similar to the Bayeux Tapestry in the way it is designed. In the Bayeux, however, the top and bottom border give additional contextual information, while in the Ta-Pastry they are more or less purely decorative. Both are created in a linear storytelling format, with each scene running concurrently into the next.
The Ta-Pastry opens with John Gregg riding the city on his bike, delivering his baked products by hand. The industrial cityscape behind him, along with an artfully stitched Tyne Bridge and quayside. The seagulls, which are ever present along that riverside, have been manifested in the design of the border to this artwork. This cycling through the city melts seamlessly into the scene of pastry chefs beginning to mass-produce the sausage rolls in a more industrial setting.
As the second part ends with a successful shop, chapter three in this artwork shows that the sausage roll has become a cultural icon, as much celebrated as sports personalities. The televised image of a presenter testing out the newly crafted vegan sausage roll in 2019 is shown in part four, alongside a Concorde, which at that time had long been removed from service; this demonstrates the longevity of such a simple pastry.
Part five shows how the humble sausage roll has taken over popular culture, from a couple having sausage rolls at their wedding (and a seagull joining in); to a group of Primark shoppers who have discovered the Greggs clothing collaboration. The last panel, of course, demonstrates the extent to which Greggs has conquered the British High Street, demonstrating that with tenacity and time, something simple can become a national cultural icon.
That this Ta-Pastry was created as a publicity stunt by Greggs in the lead-up to a major cultural event, so that they could get in on the action, is quite ingenious. While not as brazen or brash as some of their other stunts, this one at least has good artistic merit to it and will leave a lasting legacy for the future of bakeries everywhere in the form of this Ta-Pastry.
https://www.northeastmuseums.org.uk/greatnorthmuseum/whats-on/ta-pastry
