Even before the American Bicentennial, Joanne Slater of New York City had begun thinking about the project that would one day become the historically significant Millennium Time Tapestry. Joanne wanted to find a way of commemorating 10 centuries of human endeavor in a single round tableau of archival art.

Joanne (far left in the photo) is a musical composer by education. She instinctively knew that, like separate instruments in an orchestra, individual images arranged in a harmonic way could create a truly symphonic work of visual art. She was thinking along the lines of fine découpage – some way of combining many disparate archival images, rather than producing an interpretive work by a contemporary illustrator.

It was Mimi Van Swall (second from left) who took the project to the next level, after determining the sectioned spiral format. Mimi is a practicing artist first and an educator second, but for this project, she became our art curator. She spent over two years, starting in 1997, researching authentic images that would symbolize significant people, events and intellectual advances since the year 1001.

With just enough trepidation about the feasibility of all this, marketing consultant Patrice Gillespie (second from right) began working with Joanne on product development. Clearly, the vast number and fine quality of the images Mimi had researched called for unprecedented capacity and performance in reproduction techniques, and it was decided that digital découpage might be the way to go.

Luckily, graphic designer Liz Bailey (far right in the photo) was already accustomed to doing extraordinary work. Trained as a traditional artist and sculptor, Liz had set aside her brushes, and had been working in Adobe Photoshop with then-state-of-the-art computer equipment in the commercial art field. Given stacks of archival art, Liz began composing "the mother of all Photoshop files," and created the work that Patrice would name the "Millennium Time Tapestry"–hundreds of digitized images, virtually woven together in a multi-layered, painterly way, to tell the story of one thousand years.

The rest is history. The G3 computer chip and a gigabyte of RAM became available just in time to allow Liz to complete her masterpiece and the subsequent individual product designs. Then dozens of people from all over the country–a more complete listing appears in the Acknowledgements–helped us bring this project to fruition. In particular:

In this new millennium, may we all become better guardians of the natural world which has sustained us to date.

 Acknowledgements

We heartily thank the New York Public Library's Joseph "Jay" Vissers and our Long Island graphic designer and dear friend Joe Gschwind for their steady guidance and exceptional talents. We salute the fine staff at Pindar Press, namely Joe Guise, Cathy Sylvis, Geoff Graser and the steadfastly brilliant designer Izabella A Jaskierny, for their superb–and award-winning–production of our book. For her finesse with cutting edge digital photography, we are indebted to Carolyn Taylor of Port Chester, NY.

There are other people and organizations to whom we are grateful, most importantly Robin Anderson; Apple Computer; Donald Bailey; Ruth Bailey; Benjamin Barnes; Chris Berry; Leigh Berry; Melissa Bliven; Martha Phillips Bootzin; Everett Bootzin; Champion International Paper; Cowan, DeBaets, Abrahams & Sheppard, LLP, New York; Fred DeCaro, III; Design Point Decal, Inc., Rye, NY; Jane and Jetstar Diorio; Liz Dolan; Audrey and F. Michael Donohue, Jr.; Nancy Doyle; Jean Everett; Fitz and Floyd, Lewisville, TX; Gallery 300, New York, NY; Adair Garis; Tim Gelling; Delores Gersten; Cliff Giles; Dick Gillespie; The Great American Puzzle Factory, Norwalk, CT; Diane Hibbert; Betty Hodas; Tom Iampietro; Image Works, Westport, CT; Robyn Inserillo; Dr. Mae Jemison; Katherine Kennedy, PhD., Lady Clare Limited, Lutterworth, England; Dave Link; Cathy Manning; Mantero, NYC and Como, Italy; Lauren McGee; Miller Johnson, Inc., Meridan, CT; Val Monasterio; Ray Nelson; The New York Public Library; Kevin O'Donnell and his associates at Hartford Direct, Berlin, CT; Guy Ortoleva; Perman & Green, LLP, Fairfield, CT; Stephen Phillips; Sharon Pleasant; Tod Pleasant; Projects Viscom, Wilton, CT; Karen Ronald and the Wilton Library, Wilton, CT; Mary Saccary; Saddle River Day School, Saddle River, NJ; Irma Serafini; Jim Shine; Joe Simeone; Kay Spear; Stoneleigh-Burnham School, Greenfield, MA; Patrice Levi Swanson; Three Wishes, Westport, CT; Austin Trevett Photographs, New York, NY; Kevan Vanek; Vantel Web Services, Norton, MA; Dan Verdery; Mindy Waters; Janice Weeks; Maurice E. Williams; the Wolfpit Running Club; Martha Wyman and Cindy Zontek.

 CREDITS

The authors wish to thank the many individuals and organizations that have provided images from their libraries and media resources. Every effort has been made to trace and credit the copyright owners of the images depicted in the Time Tapestry and its variations. A complete list of credits appears in the book, The Millennium Time Tapestry, and also in the Map provided with the other items in the Time Tapestry Collection.