Satin Hunting Coat c. 1620

Harkening back a little earlier to the period of the Plimoth Jacket (1620-1630), here is a yummy silk embroidered satin hunting coat made in India (Mugal) at the Victoria and Albert Museum.  I would love that!  There are many pictures on the catalog entry on the V&A site as well as a close up image.  Definitely in the style of embroidery of the period, but distinctly not English.  It is lovely and I had to share it when I stumbled upon it today.

Tricia

Casket from The Duchess of Roxburghe

Sotheby's offered a casket owned by the late Duchess of Roxburghe in May.  The Duchess had been one of the train bearers of Queen Elizabeth's train for her coronation.

The box is heavily degraded, has the story of Rebecca at the well on its sides, but has a lovely interior set of embroidered drawer fronts.  There are several views on the site.

Embroidering Hair on Stumpwork - A Resource

Depending on the period of your embroidery, you need to understand the hairstyles, jewelry, ruffs, and head coverings to get your lady right.  I have found many resources that I have shared with my students, but this one came up yesterday and I just had to put it out there.  This blogger has cut out portraits and put them into lineups for every 10 years between 1500 -1700.  Amazing.   And you really get the flow of the changes as well as it makes it so much easier to interpret the lines on the draftings for motifs during this period.  There is much more on the site.

If you want to look at lace collar styles for men and women, men's hats, and even a detailed diagram of facial hair on men for every 10 years between 1510-1690.  Pick your decade and how to draw the face is right there for the picking!  These are specific to France but the fashion did travel across the borders.  And it makes it much easier to make sure that your figures on your piece are of the same time frame!

Jenny Tiramani in New York

The Bard Graduate School Gallery is showing a wonderful exhibit from the Paris Arts des Arts Decoratifs about the structure of garments from previous centuries.  The 17th century is well represented in the exhibition and many amazing lace collars are on view.  I was able to see the exhibit in Paris in 2013 and LOVED it.  I am so thrilled that the exhibit has traveled and I can go back to see it in my neck of the woods. 

Even better, the amazing catalog that I didn't buy because I couldn't read it is now available there in English!  I know what I am carrying home!  

And the icing on the cake is a lecture (that I can't see) next week by Jenny Tiramani - it is entitled:

Stuffed and Stiffened: Multilayered Garments, X-Rays, Revealed Secrets
Jenny Tiramani, Tony Award Winning Costume Designer

Images produced by x-radiography can reveal the materials and construction of layered garments that are often hidden from view. They also provide information that is necessary to understand the structures of many 17th- and 18th-century items, such as women's stays and men's doublets. Using patterns of extant garments that include x-radiographs, together with examples of hand-stitched reconstructions of clothing from about 1600 to 1800, Jenny Tiramani will explore and relate the way these garments gave new shapes to the human body. She will use examples of reconstructed historical clothing and dress someone in them.

June 11th - 6pm-7:30pm.  

If you are in NYC - don't miss this!!  Get tickets to the lecture here.

Tricia

Contemporary Casket Article

Embroidered box in collection of Embroiderers'
Guild UK worked by Mrs. Wood.
High resolutionphotos can be purchased on their site.

I have to rave about this cabinet in the collection of the Embroiderers' Guild (UK), made by Mrs. St Osyth Mahala Wood in the late 1930s, a bequest along with many period embroideries in her collection.  Chris Berry wrote a wonderful article, full of pictures of this piece including all the elements; the article is viewable online and worth a cup of tea!

The casket would be a masterpiece even if you never viewed the interior.  The exterior is a series of cartooshes containing portraits of famous Tudor characters executed in exquisite detail in minute silk stitches.  But it is the design of the interior that delights.  Not only is the lid interior a large Elizabethan scene, but their is a series of three stackable trays.  Each tray is subdivided into many vertical compartments with an inset lid that can be removed by pulling a ribbon.  The lids are fully embroidered.  The effect is just jaw dropping.  Something I think I will have to consider - perhaps a trinket box addition!!

If you like mermaids and ships, this box has a fantastic surprise in one of the tray layers...

Tricia

The Stumpwork Mirror Almost Completed

The embroidery on my stumpwork mirror frame is completed.  This was a project that I designed and worked to give concrete examples of problem solving in the Stumpwork Course.  You can talk about doing something or show the way to do it -- with mistakes and all out for show.

For those not in the course, this was an afterthought.  Instead of doing a bunch of random motifs to illustrate, why not do it as a project and give the students all the instructions for the few who would want to follow along.  The materials were picked mainly from the kits of materials in Cabinet of Curiosities Part I and the Stumpwork Course (Part II) with some supplemental things like gilt sylke twist, the linen, and of course the mirror frame and its finishing materials.

I am really happy that I went this way as the examples really helped communicate and I have a finished piece in my hands.  Now I have to marry it with an already prepared mirror frame, maybe this week.  It all depends on me getting the guts up to do the gluing.  I swear I think about it so much and the actual doing with be in a blink.

Meanwhile it is leaning up in my living room, far from the construction going on in my office, halls, bedroom and soon kitchen.  (hate roof dams!)

If you are interested in learning more about the Stumpwork Course - the link is here and I am registering for 150 spots right now for November 1st start.

Tricia

Pictures in the most Surprising Places!

Sometimes you are looking for something and you find something unexpected in a place you didn't consider!  That was the case yesterday when looking for pictures of florentine embroidery, up popped a bunch of pictures of Flemish and Italian cabinets from the 17th century with inset embroidery - on the Getty Images site.   This is a site where images taken by Getty publication photographers can be licensed for all kinds of uses.  And low and behold, a bunch of images from a private Italian (possibly corporate) collection.  They aren't high-res, unfortunately, but they do give us many more examples to drool over.

I can't paste any in here, but I can give you the links:

Flemish Cabinet

Italian cabinet with embroidered doors, gold and silk canvas work

Two close views of doors - View 1 and View 2

Cabinet made in Naples, perhaps with florentine embroidery on drawers, or they are lovely flower in satin stitch.

Close view of its central door.

It really makes me want one of these.  :-)  Richard (my cabinet maker for the casket course) has been drooling over these as well.  I just haven't figured out which style (Flemish table cabinet or Flemish tall chest) I want to embark upon.  But I do... saved a spot in the house for such a thing.  But can I embroider as fast as he can make it.  :-)