English embroidery

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Lady Jane Allgood displays her embroidery of an anemone and tulips worked in long-and-short stitch, part of a set of 18th century chair covers and screens which survive at Nunwick Hall, although now much faded.[1]

English embroidery includes

Medieval England created rich embroidery in metal thread and silk for ecclesiastical and secular uses. This style was called Opus Anglicanum or "English work", and was famous throughout Europe.[2]

With the

crewel work, featuring exotic leaf motifs worked in wool yarn.[4]

Gothic Revival and the Pre-Raphaelites.[5]

Although continental fashions in needlework were adopted in England, a number of popular styles were purely English in origin, including the embroidered linen jackets of the turn of the 17th century, stumpwork, and art needlework.[3]

Medieval period

Anglo-Saxon

Detail of stitching on the Bayeux Tapestry.

Little physical evidence survives to reconstruct the early development of English embroidery before the

interlace.[7][8]

The documentary evidence is rather richer than the physical remains. Part of the reason for both these facts is the taste among the late Anglo-Saxon elite for embroidering using lavish amounts of precious metal thread, especially gold, which both gave items a magnificence and expense worth recording, and meant that they were well worth burning to recover the bullion. Three old vestments, almost certainly Anglo-Saxon, recycled in this way at

Benedictional of St. Æthelwold (fol. 118v).[11]

Scholars agree that three embroidered items from the coffin of

underside couching.[13] The quality of this silk embroidery on a gold background is "unparalleled in Europe at this time."[7]

Scholarly consensus favours an Anglo-Saxon, probably Kentish origin for the Bayeux Tapestry. This famous narrative of the Conquest is not a true woven tapestry but an embroidered hanging worked in wool yarn on a tabby-woven linen ground using outline or stem stitch for lettering and the outlines of figures, and couching or laid work for filling in figures.[2][14][15]

Opus Anglicanum

Main article: Opus Anglicanum
The Butler-Bowden Cope
, 1330–1350, V&A Museum no. T.36-1955.

The Anglo-Saxon embroidery style combining split stitch and couching with silk and goldwork in gold or silver-gilt thread of the Durham examples flowered from the 12th to the 14th centuries into a style known to contemporaries as Opus Anglicanum or "English work". Opus Anglicanum was made for both ecclesiastical and secular use on clothing, hangings, and other textiles. It was usually worked on linen or dark silks, or later, worked as individual motifs on linen and applied to velvet.[2][16]

Throughout this period, the designs of embroidery paralleled fashions in manuscript illumination and

Gothic arches.[2][16]

Opus Anglicanum was famous throughout Europe. A "Gregory of London" was working in Rome as a gold-embroiderer to

the Butler-Bowden Cope of 1330–50 in the Victoria and Albert Museum
, embroidered with silver and silver-gilt thread and coloured silks on silk velvet, which was disassembled and later reassembled into a cope in the 19th century.

Professional embroiderers

By the 13th century, most English goldwork was made in London workshops, which produced ecclesiastical work, clothing and furnishings for royalty and the nobility, heraldic banners and horse-trappings, and the ceremonial regalia for the great livery companies of the City of London and for the court.[17][18][19]

The founding of the embroiderer's

Elizabeth I in 1561 as the Worshipful Company of Broderers.[21] Professional embroiderers were also attached to the great households of England, but it is unlikely that those working far from London were members of the Company.[19]

From the middle of the 14th century, money that had previously been spent on luxury goods like lavish embroidery was redirected to military expenditure, and imported Italian figured silks competed with native embroidery traditions. Varieties of design in textiles succeeded each other very rapidly, and they were more readily available than the more leisurely produced needlework. The work produced by the London workshops was simplified to meet the demands of this deteriorating market. The new techniques required less work and smaller quantities of expensive materials. Surface couching replaced underside couching, and allover embroidery was replaced by individual motifs worked on linen and then applied to figured silks or silk velvets.[2] Increasingly, designs for embroidery were derived directly from woven patterns, "thus losing not only their former individuality and richness, but also their former ... story-telling interest."[22]

Renaissance to Restoration

Elizabeth I wears a blackwork chemise and partlet and a gown embroidered with gold thread and studded with pearls. The Phoenix Portrait by Nicholas Hilliard, c. 1575–76

The second great flowering of English embroidery, after Opus Anglicanum, took place in the reign of

Elizabeth I.[23]

Although the majority of surviving English embroidery from the medieval period was intended for church use, this demand decreased radically with the Protestant Reformation. In contrast, the bulk of the surviving embroidery of the

Jacobean eras is for domestic use, whether for clothing or household decoration. The stable society that existed between the accession of Elizabeth in 1558 and the English Civil War encouraged the building and furnishing of new houses, in which rich textiles played a part. Some embroidery was imported in this period, including the canvas work bed valances once thought to be English but now attributed to France, but the majority of work was made in England—and increasingly, by skilled amateurs, mostly women, working domestically, to designs by professional men and women, and later to published pattern books.[24]

Tudor and Jacobean styles

A general taste for abundant surface ornamentation is reflected in both household furnishings and in fashionable court clothing from the

blackwork embroidery even when worked in other colours; red, crimson, blue, green, and pink were also popular.[26][27]

Outer clothing and furnishings of woven silk brocades and velvets were ornamented with gold and silver embroidery in linear or scrolling patterns, applied bobbin lace and passementerie, and small jewels.[25][27][28]

Margaret Laton's embroidered jacket
is typical of the early 17th century style. This jacket has survived and is in the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Tudor era, especially for large-scale works such as wall hangings. In Medieval England, rich clothing had been bequeathed to the church to be remade into vestments; following the dissolution of the monasteries at the Reformation, the rich silks and velvets of the great monastic houses were cut up and repurposed to make hangings and cushions for private homes.[23] Shapes cut from opulent fabrics and small motifs or slips worked on fine linen canvas were applied a background fabric of figured silk, velvet, or plain wool and embellished with embroidery, in a style deriving from the later, simpler forms of Medieval work.[27]

Canvaswork in which the linen ground was covered entirely by tent, gobelin, or

cross stitches in wool or silk thread was often used for cushion covers and small bags. Notable examples like the Bradford carpet, a pictorial table cover, were likely the work of professionals in the Broderers' Company.[19]

Polychrome (multicoloured) silk embroidery became fashionable in the reign of Elizabeth, and from c. 1590 to 1620 a uniquely English fashion arose for embroidered linen jackets worn informally or as part of

crewel on heavy linen for furnishings are characteristic of Jacobean embroidery.[27]

Pattern sources

Blackwork embroidery of the 1530s (left) and 1590s (right).

Pattern books for geometric embroidery and

Islamic Egypt. These patterns, seen in the portraits of Hans Holbein the Younger, were worked over counted threads in a double running stitch (later called Holbein stitch by English embroiderers).[29]

The first pattern book for embroidery published in England was Moryssche & Damaschin renewed & encreased very popular for Goldsmiths & Embroiderers by Thomas Geminus (1545). Moryssche or

arabesque designs of spirals, scrolls, and zigzags,[30] an important part of the repertoire of Renaissance ornament in many media.[31] Scrolling patterns of flowers and leaves filled with geometric filling stitches are characteristic of blackwork from the 1540s through 1590s, and similar patterns worked in coloured silks appear from the 1560s, outlined in backstitch and filled with detached buttonhole stitch.[30]

Additional pattern books for embroiderers appeared late in the century, followed by Richard Shorleyker's A Schole-house for the Needle published in London in 1624.[30] Other sources for embroidery designs were the popular herbals and emblem books. Both domestic and professional embroiderers probably relied on skilled draughtsmen or pattern-drawers to interpret these design sources and draw them out on linen ready to be stitched.[32]

Early samplers

Detail of a band sampler on buff linen, c. 1660.
Main article: Sampler (needlework)

Printed pattern books were not easily obtainable, and a sampler or embroidered record of stitches and patterns was the most common form of reference. 16th-century English samplers were stitched on a narrow band of fabric and totally covered with stitches. These band samplers were highly valued, often being mentioned in wills and passed down through the generations. These samplers were stitched using a variety of needlework styles, threads, and ornament.

The earliest dated surviving sampler, housed in the Victoria and Albert Museum, was made by Jane Bostocke who included her name and the date 1598 in the inscription, but the earliest documentary reference to sampler making goes back another hundred years, to the 1502 household expense accounts of Elizabeth of York, which record the purchase of an ell of linen to make a sampler for the queen.[33]

From the early 17th century, samplers became a more formal and stylized part of a girl's education, even as the motifs and patterns on the samplers faded from fashion.

Pictorial embroidery and stumpwork

Main article: Stumpwork
Cabinet with personifications of the five senses, raised work, third quarter 17th century

Following the death of

Restoration, Charles II and Catherine of Braganza
.

These stories were executed in canvaswork or in coloured silks in a uniquely English style called raised work, usually known by its modern name stumpwork.[35] Raised work arose from the detached buttonhole stitch fillings and braided scrolls of late Elizabethan embroidery. Areas of the embroidery were worked on white or ivory silk grounds in a variety of stitches and prominent features were padded with horsehair or lambswool, or worked around wooden shapes or wire frames. Ribbons, spangles, beads, small pieces of lace, canvaswork slips, and other objects were added to increase the dimensionality of the finished work.[3][34]

Crewel

Main articles:
Crewel Work and Jacobean embroidery
Fanciful leaf in crewelwork, detail of a curtain, England, c. 1696. V&A T.166-1961.

Sets of bed hangings embroidered in crewel wools were another characteristic product of the Stuart era. These were worked on a new fabric, a natural

Tree of Life and other motifs of Indian palampores, introduced by the trade of the East India Company.[4][36]

After the Restoration, the patterns became ever more fanciful and exuberant. "It is an almost impossible task to describe the large leaves, since they bear no resemblance to anything natural, they are, however, rarely angular in outline, rejoicing rather in sweeping curves, and drooping points, curled over to display the under side of the leaf, a device that gave opening for much ingenuity in the arrangement of the stitches."[4]

Although usually called "Jacobean embroidery" by modern stitchers, crewel has its origins in the reign of James I but remained popular through the reign of Queen Anne and into the early 18th century, when a return to the simpler forms of the earliest work became fashionable.[4]

Glorious Revolution to the Great War

Later Stuart

The accession of

Mary II following the Glorious Revolution of 1688 triggered another change in needlework fashions. Associations of stumpwork with the reign of the deposed Stuarts combined with Mary's Dutch taste ushered in new styles influenced by Indian chintzes. From the 1690s, household furnishings such as chair covers and firescreens were the focus of embroidery in the home.[37]

Georgian

Stoke Edith Wall Hanging, linen canvas embroidered with silk and wool, with some details in appliqué, 1710–1720 V&A Museum no. T.568–1996.

In the Georgian era, canvaswork was popular for chair coverings, footstools, screens and card tables. Embroidered pictures and upholstery both reflected the popular pastoral theme of men and women in the sheep-cropped English countryside. Other recurring themes include exotic Tree of Life patterns influenced by earlier crewelwork and chinoiserie with its fanciful imagery of an imaginary China, asymmetry in format and whimsical contrasts of scale. In contrast, needlepainting in silks and wools produced naturalistic portraits and domestic scenes.[38][39]

Embroidery was once again an important element of

fashion in the early 18th century. Aprons, stomachers, hanging pockets, shoes, gowns, and men's coats and waistcoats were all decorated with embroidery.[38]

Later samplers

Cross-stitch alphabet sampler worked by Elizabeth Laidman, 1760.

By the 18th century, sampler making had become an important part of girls' education in boarding and institutional schools. A commonplace component was now an

crowns and coronets, all used in marking household linens. Traditional embroidered motifs were now rearranged into decorative borders framing lengthy inscriptions or verses of an "improving" nature and small pictorial scenes. These new samplers were more useful as a record of accomplishment to be hung on the wall than as a practical stitch guide.[40]

Tambourwork

Tambourwork was a new

muslin dresses of this period, and patterns were readily available in periodicals like the Lady's Magazine which debuted in 1770.[41][42]

Tambourwork was copied by machine early in the

netting was in general use as a background by the 1820s.[43]

Smocking

Main articles: smocking and smock-frock

The linen smock-frocks worn by rural workers, especially shepherds and waggoners, in parts of England and Wales from the early eighteenth century featured fullness across the back, breast, and sleeves folded into "tubes" (narrow unpressed pleats) held in place and decorated by smocking, a type of surface embroidery in a honeycomb pattern across the pleats that controls the fullness while allowing a degree of stretch.

Embroidery styles for smock-frocks varied by region, and a number of motifs became traditional for various occupations: wheel-shapes for carters and wagoners, sheep and crooks for shepherds, and so on. Most of this embroidery was done in heavy linen thread, often in the same color as the smock.

By the mid-nineteenth century, wearing of traditional smock-frocks by country laborers was dying out, and a romantic nostalgia for England's rural past led to a fashion for women's and children's clothing loosely styled after smock-frocks. These garments are generally of very fine linen or cotton and feature delicate smocking embroidery done in cotton

floss in contrasting colors; smocked garments with pastel-colored embroidery remain popular for babies.[44]

Berlin work

Berlin wool work purse, c. 1840, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, M.2007.211.280.
Main article: Berlin wool work

In the early 19th century, canvaswork in tent or petit point stitch again became popular. The new fashion, using printed patterns and coloured tapestry wools imported from Berlin, was called

synthetic dyes. Berlin work was very durable and was made into furniture covers, cushions, bags, and slippers as well as for embroidered "copies" of popular paintings. The craze for Berlin work peaked around 1850 and died out in the 1870s, under the influence of a competing aesthetic that would become known as art needlework.[5][45]

Art needlework

Artichoke art needlework panel, wool on linen, Morris & Co.
Main article: Art needlework

In 1848, the influential

freehand surface embroidery which had been popular from the Middle Ages to the 18th century. The new style, called art needlework, emphasized flat patterns with delicate shading in satin stitch accompanied by a number of novelty stitches. It was worked in silk or wool thread dyed with natural dyes
on wool, silk, or linen grounds.

By the 1870s, Morris's decorative arts firm Morris & Co. was offering both designs for embroideries and finished works in the art needlework style. Morris became active in the growing movement to return originality and mastery of technique to embroidery. Morris and his daughter May were early supporters of the Royal School of Art Needlework, founded in 1872, whose aim was to "restore Ornamental Needlework for secular purposes to the high place it once held among decorative arts."[47]

Textiles worked in art needlework styles were featured at the various

Arts and Crafts exhibitions from the 1890s to the Great War.[48]

Modern period

Organizations whose origins date back as far as the Middle Ages remain active in supporting embroidery in Britain today.

The Worshipful Company of Broderers is now a charitable organization supporting excellence in embroidery.[49]

The

D-Day invasion of France during World War II, now in The D-Day Story in Southsea, Portsmouth
.

The

Embroiderers' Guild, also based at Hampton Court, was founded in 1906 by sixteen former students of the Royal School of Art Needlework to represent the interests of embroidery. It is active in education and exhibition.[51]

Notes

  1. ^ Beck 1992, pp. 44–44
  2. ^ a b c d e f Levey and King 1993, p. 12
  3. ^ a b c Embroiderers' Guild 1984, p. 81
  4. ^ a b c d Fitwzwilliam and Hand 1912, "Introduction"
  5. ^ a b Embroiderers' Guild 1984, p. 54
  6. ^ Coatsworth, Elizabeth: "Stitches in Time: Establishing a History of Anglo-Saxon Embroidery", in Netherton and Owen-Crocker 2005, pp. 6–7
  7. ^ a b Levey and King 1993, p. 11
  8. ^ The Maaseik Embroideries, details and photos from Historical needlework resources.
  9. ^ Dodwell, p. 181
  10. ^ Dodwell, p. 182
  11. ^ Dodwell, pp. 129–145, 174–187, and Plate D.
  12. ^ Maniple and Stole of St Cuthbert details and photos from Historical needlework resources.
  13. ^ Coatsworth 2005, p. 16
  14. ^ Coatsworth 2005, pp. 22–23
  15. ^ Wilson 1985, pp.201–227
  16. ^ a b Jourdain 1912, pp. 6–8
  17. ^ Lemon, 2004
  18. ^ Jourdain 1912, pp. 13–15
  19. ^ a b c Levey and King 1993, p. 17
  20. ^ Norris p. 225
  21. ^ Jourdain 1912, p. 56
  22. ^ Jourdain 1912, p. 15
  23. ^ a b Digby 1964, p. 21
  24. ^ Levey and King 1993, pp. 13 and 15
  25. ^ a b Hayward 2007, p. 360–361
  26. ^ a b Arnold 2008, p. 9
  27. ^ a b c d Levey 1993, pp. 16–17
  28. ^ Arnold 1985, pp. PAGES
  29. ^ Arnold 2008, p. 6
  30. ^ a b c North, Susan. "'An Instrument of profit, pleasure, and of ornament': Embroidered Tudor and Jacobean Dress Accessories." In Morrall and Watt 2008, pp. 43–47
  31. ^ Ralph N Wornum (1882). Analysis Of Ornament The Characteristics Of Styles.
  32. ^ Digby 1984, pp. 51–52
  33. ^ Fawdry and Brown, p. 16
  34. ^ a b Gueter, Ruth. "Embroidered Biblical Narratives and Their Social Context." In Morrall and Watt 2008, p. 43–47
  35. ^ Hughes, p.22
  36. ^ Beck 1995, pp. 54–58
  37. ^ Geuter, p. 73
  38. ^ a b Beck 1995, pp. 63–83
  39. ^ Hughes, p. 37
  40. ^ Beck 1995, p. 70
  41. ^ Beck 1995, pp. 86–87
  42. ^ Hughes, pp. 41, 80
  43. ^ Hughes, p.80
  44. ^ Marshall 1980, pp. 17–19
  45. ^ a b Berman 2000
  46. ^ Parry 1983, pp. 10–11.
  47. ^ Quoted in Parry 1983, pp. 18–19.
  48. ^ Parry, Linda. "Textiles". In Lochnan, Schoenherr, and Silver 1996, p. 156
  49. ^ "Worshipful Company of Broderers official site". Retrieved 2009-01-25.
  50. ^ "Royal School of Needlework official site". Retrieved 2009-01-25.
  51. ^ "Embroiderers' Guild official site". Retrieved 2009-01-25.

References

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