This is utterly fascinating, with so many Fortean aspects I was totally-oblivious to.
My first introduction to this style of unicorn tapestry art, as a child, was probably via the seminal Marshall-Cavendish partwork encyclopædia of the 1970s "The Tree of Knowledge".
This fantastic graphical reference book slowly built itself up over fortnightly (or similar frequency of published) editions, sold throughout the UK and Commonwealth by newsagents across the English-speaking world. In so doing, like a number of other core high-quality printed pictorial reference works of the era, it pre-empted the style and scope of the graphical internet that was and is the World Wide Web, substantially-influencing people such as Tim Berners-Lee and Douglas Adams (he cited ToK as having been a direct inspiration for the eponymous "Book" within the marvellous masterpiece that is "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy").
The happy fact is that I know for certain that many fellow Forteans of a similar vintage will fondly-remember 'ToK' as a publication.
During it's run, it periodically-included a number of large folded paper posters as enclosures, which in the context of this thread (I
did get there, eventually) extended also to cover this print.... which, by the law of averages, must've adorned the walls of many members of this forum in the 1970s and later:
La dame à la Licorne
The mystical detail of this print always captivated anyone who saw it, in our house, and it's always been one of my sub-conscious latter-day hopes to become reacquainted with it. I am just astounded that there are so many Fortean aspects surrounding it's precise provenance.
Thank you
so much
@lordmongrove - this for me (and probably others, here) is such an influential mystery piece, I'm really grateful to you for having shared this news item.
