Embroidery

Having been to ‘Opus Anglicanum’ at the V&A, an exhibition of medieval English embroidery, mainly of fancy goods to be worn by the clergy, at about the same time as the post on patterns was being composed (see reference 1), I was struck by parallels.

We start with the foundation cloth, often linen. A woven material with warp and weft threads arranged, as it were, to give a grid, coarse enough that one can proceed by counting threads, which would not be practical with a really fine material, particularly given medieval lighting and eyesight.

So, depending on the foundation material, a grid with squares which might be as small as half a millimetre and might be as large as two millimetres. A foundation on which we create embroidery by poking coloured threads of various sorts up and down through the holes in various tricky ways. With various sorts including gold and silver threads which can be used to produce striking shimmering effects, at least if you remember to polish them from time to time. You can read all about it at reference 3, thoughtfully provided by the people who can sell you the threads.

Proceedings which can be subject to planning and plans and which can, in principle, be reproduced exactly by someone who is not a real master of the art at all, unlike the parallel craft of painting where ‘painting by numbers’ is not usually available. And even if it were, applying paint to the surface of a prepared canvas is a more of a hit and miss business than poking coloured threads through the holes of the grids used for embroidery.

We do, however, have a lot more options available than just assigning values to those holes, or to the small squares spanned by four adjacent holes, in the way of reference 1, which last can be more or less effected by the cross stitch which used to be learned by girls in domestic science classes in the olden days. Also by submariners who needed some occupation when confined in small spaces for long periods.

More options not least because when a thread comes up through a hole, it is going to go down some other hole, usually nearby, a business which is more vector like than scalar like.

Then one thread can cross other threads, either under or over, during its passage above ground.

Or one might poke the thread carrying needle under stitches which have already been made, without poking through the foundation cloth at all.

Or one might sew a fat thread to the surface of the foundation cloth with a thin thread. Known in the trade as couching.

Or one thread might interact with itself or with another thread in some more complicated way. So, for example, one stitch might start in the middle of another, splitting its thread – with splitting being a feature of a lot of the work on show at the V&A.

And for an especially rich effect one might sew glass beads or even jewels onto the foundation, although one presumably needs a bit more than thread to hold a diamond – something which the medievals might have had trouble drilling.

All of which combines to produce something which is much more complicated than just colouring the foundation cloth, which is about as far as the patterns of reference 1 take us. All kinds of tricky knots, textures and grains – trickery which might barely survive reproduction in the snap above, at least to the untutored eye, but it there nonetheless. Unlike my patterns, these patterns are built from the threads and the foundation is just that, largely hidden by what has been erected on those foundations.

By way of an aside, I might also say how struck I was between the similarities between all the different works of the European artists working in cloth, stone, glass, illuminations and paint at this time, say the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Similarities which went further than just reflecting the ecclesiastical function of much of what has survived. And some of the embroidery of this exhibition very much reminded of the multi-media techniques sometimes employed by many of the early Italian painters – something of which can be seen in the Sainsbury’s wing of the National Gallery.

But, in sum, I think the comparison is more by way of an intriguing conceit, rather than actually helpful.

PS: See reference 4 for the visit to the V&A more generally.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/12/from-grids-to-objects.html.

Reference 2: http://www.dmc-usa.com/.

Reference 3: http://www.dmc-usa.com/Education/How-To/Learn-the-Stitches/Embroidery-Stitches.aspx.

Reference 4: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/01/sewing.html.