My old old friend Isabel Healy-Kelly-Duggan with whom I have been friends since around the mid sixties in Cork , is , like myself , addicted to all things second-hand, vide-greniers, brocantes, car-boot-sales, even rummaging in peoples rubbish.
(It must have been something in the water along with the flouride in Cork in the sixties.)

Now Isabel has spotted something which I have noticed often in Vide-Greniers here which I have never managed to think up a use for.

There was (even could be; is,) a passion for making copies of Old Masters and Scenic Views in tapestry here in France.
Once made, and framed , and inherited they often hit the sales.
That there is no market for them now is evidenced by their prices, rarely over a euro or two for something that must have often taken Madame (or Monsieur )weeks or months of painstaking work.

Isabel, never a lady who would look twice at a bargain, has a good eye and an ability to think laterally on occasion (as well as being a dab hand with the needle)

Just look at what she is doing with these masterpieces :

How’s that for cleverness !