Today I am going to share some more medieval eye-candy with you. This time we are going to explore some of the goldwork embroideries made in France during the 13th-15th centuries. Particularly Paris enjoyed a boom in embroidery during the 13th-14th centuries as the royal court resided there. Written guild regulations from 1292-1295 and 1316 suggest that female embroiderers were the norm and that the apprenticeship lasted eight years. However, the embroiderers attached to the King and the princes have names such as Robert de Varennes or Sandre Lappert. So was the situation in medieval Paris really so different from that in the Low Countries? I doubt it. Prestigious commissions from the French King and his princes were likely given to male embroiderers.

The first piece I would like to draw your attention to is a mitre worn by the abbot of the ancient abbey of Sixt, Upper-Savoy. The very fine silk- and gold embroidery is executed on white silk (either samite or serge) backed by linen. The silk embroidery is executed in split stitch and stem stitch. The goldwork embroidery is all done in couching. Although the embroidery was executed by embroiderers from Paris, the drawings were likely made by Jean le Noir, a famous illuminator who had a daughter, called Bourgot, who assisted him. I particularly like how the wings of the angel are placed so that they fit the sloping side of the mitre just perfectly.

Another piece that blew my mind was the mitre created for Sainte-Chapelle around 1375-1390. There's so much going on on this relatively small object. And the scenes are adorable. Look at the ox and the ass. They make me smile :). The amount of padding on this piece is rather incredible too. And I just love the tiny seed pearls. It makes it all looks so over the top, yet so coordinated. The treatment of the garments is quite different from the usual or nue or pattern couching seen on so many of these pieces. Instead, the different parts (folds) of the garments are created by laying separate strands pairs of passing thread in different directions. The folds are accented with couched dark brown silk. Very clever indeed.

The last pieces of embroidery I would like to draw your attention to are known as the embroidered cycle of the legend of Saint Martin. This impressive, but incomplete, collection of embroidered orphreys was made for a single altar in a church or chapel. They thus show the medieval opulence when it comes to liturgical vestments. Due to the fact that these pieces were created at the court of Rene of Anjou (1409-1480) we know the painter of some of the designs: Barthelemy d'Eyck and the embroiderer who executed them: Pierre du Billant. It probably helped that both men were related.

The embroidered orphreys are now dispersed over four museums in Paris, Lyon, Baltimore and New York. Their original layout has been lost due to more modern up-cycling. Have a look at the very fine silk shading on the drapery of the clothing on some of the figures (there's definitely more than one embroiderer at work as there are marked differences in quality between the orphreys). The brightness of the colours after nearly 600 years is simply incredible!

I hope you liked seeing some more of the temporary exhibition at Musee Cluny in Paris! If you would like to try your hand at recreating your own medieval orphrey with diaper couching and or nue, then I am pleased to tell you that I have a few kits left for sale from the Crewelwork Company needlework retreat in Stratford upon Avon. Go to my webshop to secure your kit!

Literature
Descatoire, C., 2019. L'art en broderie au moyen age. Musee de Cluny. ISBN: 978-2-7118-7428-6 .

P.S. Did you like this blog article? Did you learn something new? When yes, then please consider making a small donation. Visiting museums and doing research inevitably costs money. Supporting me and my research is much appreciated ❤!

At the beginning of January, I and my husband were lucky enough to be able to visit the embroidery exhibition in Paris. Today I'll show you some stunning pieces from the Opus Anglicanum section. The term for this type of embroidery from the 12th-14th centuries translates as 'work from England' and usually consists of very fine silken split stitches and underside couching. It was greatly valued throughout Europe especially, but not solely, for religious purposes. Therefore, you will find these stunning pieces of embroidery in museums all over Europe. But beware: not all Opus Anglicanum embroidery was actually made in England or by English hands. Medieval Europe was already so well connected that both ideas and people travelled a lot.

The graves of bishops are a great place to search for medieval embroidery. Bishops were usually laid to rest in their finery in a grave with better preservational conditions than Joe Average. Antiquarians from the 19th century knew that too and when these graves were opened for whatever reason, they brought their scissors along. This is illustrated for instance on a pair of liturgical sandals from a grave from the Cathedral of Saint-Front in Perigueux: three different museums own pieces of the same pair of sandals.

Today, many museum visitors turn their noses up when they see these brownish fragments of textile. They are mostly not 'pretty' in the usual sense. But I was very pleased to see that Musee de Cluny devoted a whole display case to these extraordinary finds. For obvious reasons, the levels of lighting were lower than in the rest of the exhibition so my pictures are sometimes a little dark. Nevertheless, look at these stunning patterns of birds and scrolling in very fine underside couching!

Another stunning piece of embroidery on display was the above panel with the martyrdoms of the saints. There is a second panel too with female saints. Both are kept in different museums in Belgium but originate from the same church in Namur, Belgium. It was in use as an altar frontal but might have originally been a vestment. The embroidery on this piece is absolutely immaculate and very fine. I particularly love the different goldwork couching patterns in the background and the immense detail on the horse. Although only the above panel was on display in Paris, both panels were displayed at the Opus Anglicanum exhibition in the Victoria & Albert Museum in London a few years ago.

One of the biggest pieces of embroidery on display were the fragments of a horse trapper (a protective garment for a horse in battle or tournament). It was unfortunately impossible to capture all (over 20, many quite small) fragments in one picture. The detail of the goldwork embroidery is amazing. The lion's mane and hairy claws are so full of movement through laying the goldthreads in different directions. In amongst the bodies of the lions are many small human figures in courtly dress. They clearly show how to embroider on such a difficult fabric as velvet: cover it with a thin piece of silk. When the embroidery is finished, cut the excess silk away.

Although this piece of embroidery comes under Opus Anglicanum it does not show any underside couching and only small areas of split stitch (the silken parts of the claws). Instead, the goldwork is all 'normal' couching and the small figures and the foliage are stitched in running stitch (hence you can see the silk that was used to keep the hairs of the velvet at bay when stitching). It is said that in using these two embroidery methods the actual embroidery would take much less time then when split stitch and underside couching were used. I agree when it comes to the split stitch versus the running stitch. The latter is much quicker as it covers more ground with fewer stitches. However, I am not so sure that normal couching is that much quicker than underside couching. I now practice both and the only marked difference for me is that underside couching is harder on your body due to the slight extra force you need to apply with every stitch.

By the way, these fragments have an interesting 'upcycling' story to them. The horse trapper was probably originally made for King Edward III. He was a guest at the Reichstag (Imperial Diet) at Koblenz, Germany, in AD 1338. The horse trapper probably remained in Germany as a royal gift. It was turned into a set of vestments for the Altenberg Abbey. These were dismantled in 1939 to once more show the original horse trapper.

There were many more beautiful pieces on display in this part of the exhibition. For those of you who were not able to visit in person, I can highly recommend the exhibition catalogue. It is packed full with good quality pictures and many close-ups. More on my textile adventures in Paris in further blog posts!

Please note: there won't be a blog post next week as I am away teaching for the Crewelwork Company. Stay tuned as I will name the next two winners of a thread pack in the first blog post after my return!

Literature
Browne, C., G. Davies & M.A. Michael (eds.), 2016. English medieval embroidery Opus Anglicanum. Yale University Press. ISBN: 978-0-300-22200-5.
Descatoire, C., 2019. L'art en broderie au moyen age. Musee de Cluny. ISBN: 978-2-7118-7428-6 .
Michael, M. (ed.), 2016. The age of Opus Anglicanum (= Studies in English medieval embroidery 1), Harvey Miller Publishers. ISBN: 978-1-909400-41-2.

P.S. Did you like this blog article? Did you learn something new? When yes, then please consider making a small donation. Visiting museums and doing research inevitably costs money. Supporting me and my research is much appreciated ❤!

P.P.S. Don't forget to sign up for my newsletter so you'll have a chance of winning a selection of embroidery threads each month!

This is the last article in the series accompanying the conference 'Über Stoff und Stein' in Munich. The other three articles can be found here: part I, part II and part III. For my last goldwork embroidery sample, I choose a letter from the Sternenmantel of Holy Roman Emperor Henry II held at Bamberg. You can read about my visit to the museum where it is housed here. As one of the conference organisers, Dr. Tanja Kohwagner-Nikolai, is also head of the research team for the embroideries held at the Diocesan Museum in Bamberg, I was able to ask very specific questions about the embroidery. I was even given a high-resolution picture of the particular letter (for obvious copyright reasons, I can't publish that picture here). Join me in my musings on recreating part of a very elaborate 'R' from a stunning piece of embroidery that's a 1000-years old.

The original goldwork embroidery was worked on a dark purple samite. This is a specific twill-type weave for silk fabric which was popular in the Middle Ages. I only once had a small piece in my hand which was found during an archaeological excavation in the medieval parts of Emden in northern Germany. Samite is hard to get hold of nowadays. Czech-based company Sartor recreates historical samites for the re-enactment scene. Fortunately for my purse, they don't have a dark purple one in stock. Instead, I had a look in my fabric stash and came up with a paisley patterned silk damask.

Next up was transferring the pattern. The drawing of the 'R' is very intricate and can only be transferred onto the fabric once simplified. I made a pricking of the simplified drawing and used white pounce powder for the transfer. The white dots were then connected with watered-down watercolour Raw Siena (see video above). As the drawing is so intricate, I did my utmost best to keep the paint lines as fine as possible. NB: From the high-resolution picture I could tell that the letter is 9.5 cm tall. As I worked with my original pictures and some crude maths, my copy is about a centimetre taller.

The Sternenmantel has undergone major alterations since it was first stitched around AD 1020. The first major re-make took place in the 15th century when the gold embroideries were cut out from the old mantle and appliqued onto the blue silk damask we see today. The thick red and white embroidered lines along the edges of the lettering date to this re-make. The original lettering looked indeed very different.

The goldthread used for the lettering is a kind of very fine passing thread. The strips of gold foil wrapped around the silk core are less than half a millimetre wide and have a near pure gold content. In comparison, most ordinary gilt goldthreads used today have a gold content of 0.3% -2%. There are about 46 goldthreads per centimetre and this makes each goldthread around 0.21 mm. This is comparable to a modern-day Stech vergoldet CS 70/80 or a smooth passing #3. The goldthread is couched down as a single thread with red silk yarn. I've used DeVere Yarns Carmine #666. There is no regular couching pattern.

Although the high-resolution picture is much better than my original pictures, I still am unable to tell if the tails of the goldthreads are plunged and tied back on the reverse of the fabric or if the ends are simply cut off and secured with an extra couching stitch. It is highly likely that the answers lie beneath the thick white and red contour lines which were added in the 15th century when the goldwork was taken off the original mantle (or mantles) and appliqued onto this 'new' one. I was also told by the head of the research team that the restoration in the 20th century now makes it impossible to inspect the reverse of the embroidery. This is very unfortunate indeed, but also shows the great strides made in textile conservation since then. In my reconstruction, I did not plunge my ends in accordance with the later Gothic embroideries from the Low Countries where there was no plunging either. I know that this is a long stretch both in time and area. However, the goldthread used is so pure that it would have been far too costly to waste any of it on the back.

During the conference, I had a lovely discussion with both Tanja and Dr. Holger Kempkens on who made the Sternenmantel and the other magnificent goldwork embroideries held at the Diocesan Museum Bamberg. We readily agreed that it was not noblewomen or nuns, but men in professional workshops. Probably travelling with the highly mobile imperial court. And with connections to both the Western world and the Islamic world. Modern-day professional commercial goldwork embroidery is often executed by men (for instance the cover for the Kaaba in Mecca). The first mentions in the historical records of women doing goldwork embroidery either as creators or repairers are from the 17th century in this part of the world (the situation is different in England).

And then there is the embroidery itself. The couching on the lettering is done in a very specific way. Although the couching stitches are placed randomly, the goldthread is by no means laid randomly. The embroiderer made sure that this very precious thread was laid down in the most economic way with as little starts and stops as possible. This is easy to do on the straight parts, but far less easy on the 'knotty' bits. Although I stared long and hard at the picture, I found out halfway through the actual stitching that I had it wrong. In comparison, my husband needed very little time to figure out the correct 'path'. Now please don't get me wrong or accuse me of sexism, but there are things in life MOST men can do better than women and vice versa. Not ALL men or ALL women. And this is not to say that there aren't women out there that can do this job perfectly. But I get the feeling that this particular embroidery job suits men better than women. Please don't hate me.

Demonstrating historical goldwork embroidery techniques to the conference delegates was very enjoyable. They were tremendously interested and had lots of questions. It is so important to get both 'head' people and 'hands' people in the same room talking to one another. Tanja's idea of doing just that for this conference was brilliant and I certainly hope that it will get copied like mad by others.

Literature
Baumgärtel-Fleischmann, R. 1983. Diözesanmuseum Bamberg ausgewählte Kunstwerke, Bayerische Verlagsanstalt Bamberg. ISBN 3-87052-380-8.
Kohwagner-Nikolai, T., S. Ruß & U. Drewello, 2016. Goldgestickte Vergangenheitsinszenierung, Restauro 5, pp. 48-53.
Kohwagner-Nikolai, T., 2014. O Decus Europae Cesar Heinrice? Die Saumumschrift des sogennanten Bamberger Sternenmantels Kaiser Heinrichs II., Archiv für Diplomatik, Schriftgeschichte, Siegel- und Wappenkunde 60, pp. 135-1646.

P.S. Did you like this blog article? Did you learn something new? When yes, then please consider making a small donation. Visiting museums and doing research inevitably costs money. Supporting me and my research is much appreciated ❤!

P.P.S. My effort to raise money for the relief fund of the Australian Red Cross in the aftermath of the bushfires amounted to € 80. I've decided to up that to € 100 and this has now been donated. Mabel Reedijk won the embroidered coaster. Congratulations and a huge thank you to Anja Deijl, Jackie Ayres and my parents who also generously donated!

Today we are going to have a look at two more modern examples of lettering in goldwork embroidery. One can be found on the burial shroud of a princess from Romania and the other is part of a dedication on an orthodox podea or icon cover. They were both part of a temporary exhibition on Romanian embroidery in the Louvre Museum last summer. You can read all about that trip here. In recreating these samples, I had to use common padded goldwork embroidery techniques I am no longer very familiar with. And I made a rookie mistake. Read on so you'll learn from that mistake. I for my part have made a big yellow mental post-it :).

First up is the burial shroud of Maria of Mangup, second wife of Prince Stephen the Great of Moldavia. The shroud measures 191 x 103 cm and shows Maria laying in her tomb. She is richly dressed in Ottoman clothing and adorned with precious jewellery. The embroidery is executed with silver and gilt threads as well as coloured silks on red silk fabric. Maria likely died on the 19th of December AD 1477 and is buried at Putna monastery in Romania. The church Slavonic text surrounding the depiction of Maria is written in Cyrillic lettering. The four corners show monograms and double-headed eagles in order to point to Maria's family links with the Byzantine empire.

For the epigraphy conference 'Über Stoff und Stein' in Munich next week, I decided to recreate Maria's first name. The embroidery technique used for the lettering seems to be gimped couching over string padding. This means that passing thread is laid over the padding and secured on both sides of the padding with a small couching stitch. The passing thread is folded forwards and backwards over the string padding until all of the padding is covered. Think of it as a satin stitch over padding, but without going through the fabric with the passing thread.

Although I know I should have used linen string padding to be historically correct, but I was unable to find some. If anyone knows of a good source, I am all ears! First, I tried soft string padding as it is easier to manipulate. However, when applying the passing thread they would shift and sit on top of each other as the padding was just not firm enough (see on the letter M in the picture above). Then I used white string and that was much better. I also noticed that the widened ends of the letters had less height than the 'body' of the letters. This made me think that the embroiderers must have untwisted the padding thread they were using in order to create this effect.

The hardest thing with this lettering sample is the joints and the widening at the ends. For what I can see in the original, the embroiderers fudged until it looked pleasing enough. I have used Stech vergoldet 80/90 CS which is comparable to passing thread #4 and DeVere yarns silk Hessian #18267 for my couching thread. Not bad for a first attempt, but certainly not as smooth as the original :). This has likely to do with the modern passing thread having slightly different properties than the original thread used. And I do apologize for the cat hairs visible in the picture; Sammie cat is poorly and clings to me a lot!

The youngest sample I included is this magnificent podea or icon cover made in AD 1681. The amount of Greek lettering in cutwork embroidery is unbelievable. The podea measures 120 x 99 cm and shows in the centre the monastery church it has been intended for and the donors: Serban Cantacuzino and his family. Although this particular embroidery piece sits just outside the time frame of the conference (Middle Ages until AD 1650), I included it as it makes use of different materials and a different technique: cutwork over string padding using gilt bright check.

For my recreation, I choose the top Greek word to the left of the Madonna with Child medallion. Unfortunately, I can't make out what it says. The first letter seems to be an Iota, then maybe a Pi, then a Lambda it seems, another Pi maybe, then maybe a Tau and then a Ny. This part of the dedication does not seem to be covered in the exhibition catalogue.

The lettering on the podea is simple cutwork over string padding. How hard can that be? Very hard when you are me. I absolutely detest cutwork. Not being able to see the world in 3-D, means that cutting purl to the required length is nearly impossible. Why did I still do it? Every so often one of my dear students WANTS to do cutwork. In order to be at least able to explain the technique well, I do need to practice every once in a while. So off I went with putting in the soft string padding. That was a little fiddly with all the tiny bits on some of the letters. But once all the padding was applied, the word still looked rather good. That was not to last.

Although I had remembered to place my padding within the design lines of the lettering, it was by no means enough to prevent the above catastrophe happening. The padding on the original piece is quite high, but clearly much narrower than mine. Once I applied the bright check #8, it all went pear-shaped. Not helped by the fact that the size of the original bright check is smaller than a #8 (sizes #9 and #10 do exist, but are not commonly used and I don't have them in my stash). Why didn't I re-do the sample? Why should I? Due to my eye-condition, I can't do a good job. In addition, the conference delegates do get a good impression of how the cutwork technique works. And that's the main thing. I also felt even more admiration for the embroider of the original podea: Master Gherasim de Galata (his name suggests he was from modern-day Istanbul). He must have had a lot of practice to make the tremendous amount of lettering look so regular. Master Gherasim would never have employed me in his workshop :).

Literature
Durand, J. & E. Cernea, 2019. Broderies de tradition Byzantine en Roumanie du XVe au XVIIe Siecle. Musee du Louvre. ISBN 978-2-902302-02-4.

P.S. Did you like this blog article? Did you learn something new? When yes, then please consider making a small donation. Visiting museums and doing research inevitably costs money. Supporting me and my research is much appreciated ❤!

From 12-14 February, the Bavarian Academy of Sciences will host the 15th international conference on medieval and early modern epigraphy. They have asked me to demonstrate the various ways in which lettering can be represented in goldwork embroidery during this long period. I've decided to concentrate my efforts on five different historical pieces: 1) the Sternenmantel of Henry II Holy Roman Emperor, dating to AD 1010-20, 2) the Bamberger Antependium from AD 1300, 3) the Vice cope from AD 1350-75, 4) the funeral pall of Maria of Mangup AD 1477 and 5) a podea (icon cover) donated by Serban Cantacuzino in AD 1671. I have seen all these pieces in the past couple of years and taken my own pictures. However, determining how the lettering was stitched, proved to be difficult. In order to keep a log of my findings and to teach you a thing or two about goldwork embroidery, I am going to write four blog posts on this project.

First up is preparation. Apart from the Bamberger Antependium, all these goldwork letters were stitched on very luxurious silk fabric. So I dressed my slate frame with Zweigart Bergen linen and kept the tension a bit slack. Then I applied pieces of my silk fabrics using herringbone stitch. It is important to orientate the fabric pieces on the grain of the linen fabric. Once the pieces are applied, the frame is stretched to drum taut. In the two short videos above, you'll see slack on the left and drum taut on the right.

I'd like my lettering to be as close to the originals as possible. The first thing to do is to determine how large the lettering in question is. Lighting in the textile department of the Bayrische Nationalmuseum is rather poor and I had to take all of my pictures under an angle. Not suitable. Luckily, I found a perfect picture in a book. It had the whole height of the Antependium on there and since I knew that height in centimetres, basic math led me to an approximation of their size. The word Baltasar measures about 25 cm from B to S. Since the goldwork was stitched directly onto the linen, I used a pencil and a lightbox for the transfer. The original transfer was probably done free-hand: look at the irregular spacing between the individual letters and the irregular shape of the three As.

Next up I tried to determine the size of the gold threads used. Without actually measuring them, this is a rather wild guess. Since the piece is quite old, the gold thread used is probably very fine. But from my memory, it was not as fine as what I recently saw in Bamberg. So I originally went for a gilt passing thread #3 (but had to later change to the even finer gilt Stech 50/60 CS as my edges became too round compared to the original). From the literature, I knew that couching in goldwork embroidery went from single thread to pairs of thread being couched down in one go, somewhere in the 12th century. Since the Bamberger Antependium was stitched around AD 1300, it could well be that this newer and faster method of couching down pairs of thread was employed. And I think the picture above proves this. From the literature, I knew that yellow silk was used for the couching stitches. I went with DeVere Yarns Chamoix #682.

One of the things I can't tell from my pictures nor is it mentioned in the literature: what happened to the tail of the goldthread? Was it plunged? Did they simply secure them on the surface and clip them close? The latter method is used in the orphreys from the 15th and 16th centuries, so I went with that.

The couching pattern used is not our now very common bricking pattern. Instead, it is a slanted line or slash. And since the ground fabric is linen, the couching process becomes a counted thread embroidery technique. I opted for five fabric threads between each couching stitch.

As stated above, I did stitch the first letter twice as I couldn't copy the sharp turns of the original with the ticker thread. The way the letter is shaped also meant that I had to start and stop my goldthreads several times as just bending them would not have accommodated the shape of the letter. Once I was happy with how my R turned out, I needed to stitch a black silken outline around it. As all of the silk embroidery in this piece is done in stem stitch (yup, everything! Rows and rows of alternating stem stitch to fill every design element that's not filled with couched goldthreads), I used stem stitch for the outline too. I used four plies of black Chinese flat silk.

That's all for now! Next week I'll review my textile tour of Paris with Rebecca Devaney!

Literature
Durian-Ress, S., 1986. Meisterwerke mittelalterliche Textilkunst aus dem Bayrischen Nationalmuseum. Schnell & Steiner. ISBN 3-7954-0636-6.
Müller-Christensen, S. & M. Schuette, 1963. Das Stickereiwerk. Wasmuth. No ISBN.

P.S. Did you like this blog article? Did you learn something new? When yes, then please consider making a small donation. Visiting museums and doing research inevitably costs money. Supporting me and my research is much appreciated ❤!

Happy New Year to you all! My 2020 started with a 630 km round-trip to Bamberg. The diocesan museum houses some of the finest medieval goldwork embroideries in Europe. These exquisite pieces are a staggering 1000-years old! I was able to take some good pictures, which I am going to share with you here. Unfortunately, there was virtually no information available in the museum so I can't really tell you much about the pieces. However, I've ordered some literature and will do a further post with those details when the papers arrive.

Probably the most famous piece held at the museum is the so-called "Sternenmantel Kaiser Heinrich II des Heiligen" (star mantle of Saint emperor Henry II). It was used as a cope or pluviale and measures 297 cm by 154 cm. The mantle shows Christological depictions, astrological signs and 14 roundels with busts of saints and many Latin inscriptions explaining what is depicted. Unfortunately, the gold embroidery was re-applied to the blue Italian silk damask we see today in 1503. The original design got mixed up and not all writing makes sense. Some scholars argue that in fact two mantles were made into one.

The original background fabric was a dark-purple silk samite. Traces can still be seen on the inside of the different design elements. When the pieces were transferred onto the new blue damask, the edges were covered with a thick white strand of silk couched down with a thinner strand of white silk. To have an even better attachment, some of the design lines on the inside were covered with split or chain stitches using red silk. The original gold embroidery uses VERY fine passing thread and white, red, blue and green silk for the couching stitches. It looked to me that the passing thread has been couched as a single thread, rather than in pairs.

Traditionally, this mantle is dated to AD 1010-1020 and its place of origin as Regensburg with a ?. The mantle is seen, based on the embroidered inscriptions, as a gift from Melus of Bari (died 1020 in Bamberg) when he sought the support of Emperor Henry II for his revolt against the Byzantine Empire. It is, therefore, more logical that the mantle was made in Southern Italy.

The second famous mantle held at the diocesan museum in Bamberg is that of Saint Kunigunde, wife of emperor Henry II. This cope measures 286 cm by 162,5 cm and shows biblical scenes, a.o. related to Christ saviour and to the lives of the patrons of Bamberg Cathedral: St. Peter and St. Paul. Lettering around each roundel explains the stitched scenes. This cope was likely a donation by empress Kunigunde to the cathedral and made around 1020 AD in Southern Germany.

The original VERY fine goldwork embroidery was stitched on a background of blue silk twill. There are 56 parallel passing threads per centimetre (!!!) and this means that each passing thread (a strip of gold foil spun around a silk core, see my previous blog on the manufacture of gold threads) had a width of about 0.18 mm. In comparison: my finest passing thread (Stech 50/60 CS) has a width of 0.22 mm. Pretty mindblowing, don't you think?! For the figures, these parallel passing threads lay vertically and are couched down in several different patterns using white, red, light- and dark blue silks. Further details are stitched in stem stitch. The embroideries from this mantle have also been re-applied onto a new fabric in the 16th century.

Why have these two pieces survived in such splendid condition? This is due to the fact that both copes or mantles were related to the emperor and his empress. Both were sanctified. Bamberg employed these famous saints for their own marketing purposes since the late Middle Ages. This is likely the reason why the pieces were re-applied and probably altered then. Quasi to strengthen the case of the link between Bamberg and these two saints.

Currently, a four-year research project on these vestments runs until 30-09-2020. For the first time, the art historians are employing scientific techniques to determine the origins of the materials used in these exquisite goldwork embroideries. We can thus look forward to a volume of papers being published on the subject in the coming years!

Literature
Enzensberger, H., 2007. Bamberg und Apulien, in: Das Bistum Bamberg in der Welt des Mittelalters (=Bamberger interdisziplinäre Mittelalterstudien. Vorträge und Vorlesungen 1), C. & K. van Eickels (eds), p. 141–150.
Kohwagner-Nikolai, T., 2014. O Decus Europae Cesar Heinrice? Die Saumumschrift des sogenannten Bamberger Sternenmantels Kaiser Heinrichs II, Archiv für Diplomatik, Schriftgeschichte, Siegel- und Wappenkunde 60/1, p. 135–164.
Schuette, M. & Müller-Christensen, S., 1963. Das Stickereiwerk. Wasmuth. No ISBN.

P.S. Did you like this blog article? Did you learn something new? When yes, then please consider making a small donation. Visiting museums and doing research inevitably costs money. Supporting me and my research is much appreciated ❤!

P.P.S. Don't forget to sign up for my newsletter so you'll have a chance of winning a selection of embroidery threads each month!

Goldwork on vestments form the 19th and 20th centuries in particular often incorporates shapes made out of gilt foil. The most common ones are the domes representing grapes or the seals on the book with the seven seals (see picture below). Another common shape is that of a grain which was used to make up a wheatear. It isn't often that you find these pieces for sale nowadays, so I am really pleased that I am now able to offer you a wide selection of these shapes in my webshop! They range from the classic shapes to very finely worked flowers and stars. But first, let's explore their historical uses a little bit with some beautiful ecclesiastical embroidery.

This picture was taken at the 'Goud, zilver & zijde' exhibition in 2011 in Deurne, the Netherlands. It shows a detail of a chasuble by Leo Peters made between 1910-1915. The scene shows the Lamb of God on the book of seven seals of the Apocalypse as described in Revelation. The domed shapes used as seals clearly show the tiny holes in the rim whit which the shapes are attached. Interestingly, the shapes come without holes. They are punched as required by the embroiderer. I use a sharp, sturdy needle and a thimble with a metal piece to punch these holes in. I usually lay the foil to be punched on a large eraser. Working carefully and slowly is key!

And here is a red chasuble (late 18th-early 19th century) from the Church Museum in Vilnius, Lithuania, sporting a bunch of grapes. The bunch of grapes is made up of domes of different sizes. The domes are stitched to a piece of gold-coloured fabric before being appliqued onto the chasuble. Each dome is surrounded by fine purl.

And here is an example of the wheatears from a banner from the 'Onze Lieve Vrouw Parochie' in Arnhem, the Netherlands which I photographed in 2011. Holes were punched into the tips of each shape and then attached. The outer holes also have a tiny little piece of purl stitched into them to represent the spikes.

And here is another lovely example of both the grapes and the wheatears. This is also from a banner photographed in the Walburgis in Arnhem in 2011.

If you are thinking of stitching your own bunch of grapes or even a book with seven seals, there are now four different sizes of domes/grapes available from my webshop.

And I can also help with wheatears :)! From the simple to the exotic.

And what do you think of these: roundels, stars & fleur-de-lis or droplets?

But I like the flowers best! Think of all the possibilities. And those of you not adverse to a dab of glue every now and then can get very creative with even the tinier ones. Just make sure you test your glue first with your chosen fabric.

Which ones will you choose? Christmas gifts to self are allowed :).

Today I am possibly going to spent your money :). I bought my copy of Alison Cole's latest book 'The Goldwork Masterclass: adventures in metal thread embroidery' a couple of weeks ago. As with her other book 'The Stumpwork Masterclass', which I wrote about here, this is another splendid addition to your needlework library.

The book starts with a brief history of goldwork embroidery. Nothing in-depth, but enough to give you a bit of a background. Illustrated with pictures of historical pieces, sometimes from Alison's own collection. This chapter is followed by a chapter on basic requirements (answering questions on which fabrics to use), one on transferring and framing up (a proper slate frame is best for most projects) and a chapter on all the different forms of padding (slight differences with how I learned at the RSN, will definitely try to see what actual difference it makes).

After these introductory chapters, the real deal starts with a detailed chapter on all the different forms of couching gold threads. Including instructions on how to do double-sided brick stitch petals (I must SO try this one day!). Alison not only looked at English-style goldwork embroidery, but also remarks on goldwork embroidery from China, India, Spain, France and Turkey.

The next chapter describes my favourite goldwork technique, or nue, in great detail. This is basically a form of needle painting over pairs of goldwork couching threads such as passing thread. As I have studied this technique in-depth myself, I do not agree with everything Alison says. For instance, the hey-day of or nue lasted well into the 16th century in the Low Countries and long-and-short stitch in silk is indeed worked over the goldthreads for the hands of the saintly figures on these particular orphreys.

The chapter on or nue is followed by similar in-depth chapters on other couching threads, pearl purl and plate, purl and other traditional materials.  Oh, the possibilities! The two chapters that follow these are centred around the techniques used in a particular historical period: Opus Anglicanum and Elizabethan & Stuart goldwork (packed full with braided stitches I SO must try one day!). The final chapters cover techniques and design elements such as fillings, creative materials taken further, combining goldwork with other embroidery techniques, ceremonial goldwork and other golden goodies (making your own braids). The whole book is packed full with beautiful and detailed pictures of antique goldwork embroideries from Alison's own collection, modern pieces by Alison or from collections around the world. Very inspirational indeed!

This book is not your average project book. Each chapter comes with a sampler showcasing all the techniques described in the text. This is really cleverly done. You work a small design in a particular technique to just master this particular part of goldwork embroidery. A masterclass, indeed!

I really love this book and I think you should definitely have this on your shelf when you are interested in goldwork embroidery. Compared to all the other famous goldwork embroidery books I own, this one is the most complete. It even contains techniques I wasn't familiar with. This is absolute bliss and unfortunately happens less and less when you reach a certain level in your embroidery practice. But, as with all of the other famous goldwork embroidery books I own, this book is also essentially written from an English perspective. What do I mean by this? Some of Alison's pertinent remarks regarding the availability of certain types of threads (particularly different sizes of plate, whipped plate and shaped folien)  or how they are used are simply not true when you have access to German and Dutch sources (in the broadest sense of the word). It reminded me that language can be such a barrier. And I am sure I would have been guilty of the same as I find it hard to decipher the romano languages, let allone Greek or Russian ...

Where to find this fantastic book? I've bought mine directly from Alison. With the shipping to Germany it came to about €57. Perfectly good value for a book packed full with so much information. And it worked out about €3 more expensive than when I had bought from a European source. As Alison probably earns the most from books bought directly from here, the price difference of a cappuccino should be worth it, I think :).

This week I am having fun passing on my silk-shading skills to two very willing students: Mari-jan from the Netherlands and Pauline from two villages down the road. Very enjoyable indeed. If you would like to learn a new embroidery skill in a friendly atmoshpere: next year's dates can be found in the 'learn' section of this website. You can choose from silk-shading, stumpwork, surface embroidery, goldwork, blackwork and canvaswork. These classes take place in my studio here in Bad Bayersoien, Germany. The village where I live provides ample affordable accommodation. Most hosts will pick you up from the train station in the next village down the road. As I put lunch on the table every course day, you probably don't need to go out for dinner at night. However, if you want to, there are several good restaurants in Bad Bayersoien. We also have a well-stocked village shop with a large section of fresh produce and a great bakery. You are not going to starve :). Just let me know if you need some suggestions on how to get here and/or where to stay!

New in the shop are two beautiful 100% linen fabrics manufactured by Zweigart. I already stocked 40 ct Newcastle and 35 ct Edinburgh. These are now joined by 46 ct Bergen and 56 ct Kingston. Both available in their unbleached natural colour.

And last but not least: I received a picture of this beautiful finished goldwork project started earlier this year during the goldwork course by Olga. I think she did a stunning job!

Nowadays we have a plethora of different gold threads at our disposal. Or better: metal threads as they are available in a wide array of colours too. However, it all started much, much humbler thousands of years ago. Yep, that's how long these beauties have been around. The oldest mention of gold threads is in the bible (Exodus 39, 3): "They hammered the gold into thin plates and cut them into threads in order to work it into the blue, purple and scarlet yarn and the fine linen crafted by the skilled artisan." Personally, I think a link between the eruption of the volcano on ancient Thera and the story of Exodus is very plausible. New C-14 dating evidence showed that this eruption took place around 1613 BC +/- 13 years. Bear in mind that the book of Exodus existed as oral tradition for many generations before it was finally written down. However, it could mean that the manufacture of gold threads is at least nearly 4000 years old.

What did these earliest gold threads look like? Well, if we read scripture carefully, it suggests to me that they looked a lot like our modern plate. Thin strips of flat metal thread. On the other hand, the fact that they are "worked into the blue, purple and scarlet yarn" sounds a bit like it is being used as blending filament. Now modern-day blending filament is a super-thin polyester. Certainly not what the ancient Hebrews had at their disposal. Their thread must have been stiffer, heavier and thicker. But it might just be that they used it in a similar way as modern embroiderers use blending filament. Or they used the thin strips of metal just like the embroiderers in Turkey. They take a large flat needle and use lengths of plate IN the needle. Not like the way I was thought to use plate at the Royal School of Needlework where we couched it down.

A disadvantage of used hammered precious metals as a base for your gold threads is that they are very expensive. Furthermore, when you work them into the garment, that garment becomes quite heavy. To overcome the first problem, gilt threads were introduced. This means that you use a more base metal such as silver or copper and you adhere a very thin layer of gold to it. This reduces the cost. But you are still left with the weight issue. In comes the invention of hammering the metal into even tinner sheets, cutting them into strips and adhering these strips onto animal gut or plant material such as mulberry paper. The combined material is then wrapped around a yarn core by means of spinning. These threads would have been comparable to today's Japanese Threads and Passing Threads.

When and where were these new metal threads invented? Unfortunately, the exact origin and time are unknown, but a pure gold strip likely wound around a fibrous core (not survived as it was a cremation) has been found in a Roman grave of a young woman in Cadiz, Spain. The tiny dimensions of the gold strip are mind-boggling: 0.2 mm wide and only 3.6 microns thick.

There is a second method for producing metal threads: wire drawing. By passing a strip of metal through a progressivly smaller series of holes, very fine metal wire could be obtained. These were probably first used in jewellery production, but archaeological finds show that they were also used in textile production in China from the 2nd century BC and in the port of trade Birka (Sweden) from the 9/10th century. Some of these threads consist of tightly wound wires around a textile core. Although some researchers suggest that these wires were actually imported from the East (Byzantium) it is noteworthy that these kinds of wires have been known to the Sami people. However, they use pewter and not silver or gold. I wrote a blog article on their type of embroidery. These threads look like very fine pearl purl, but with a fibrous core. They are still produced today and can be obtained online from Swedish webshops.

Gilded silver threads began to appear in the 9th century, but might be older. The oldest type consists of hammered sheets of silver covered with a thin layer of gold. When strips are cut from these sheets, they are gilded on only one side. These strips were then spun around a fibrous core. This type of gold thread is known as or de Milan. Were they invented in Milan or simply traded from Milan into the rest of Europe? These threads further developed in the 16th century as gilded drawn silver threads were hammered flat and spun around a fibrous core. These threads are all-over golden. These drawn threads have the huge advantage that they are much longer than the strips from the sheets and thus reduce the number of joints whilst spinning.

And then there is yet another method to produce a gold thread with a fibrous core: membrane gold. This is where animal tissue is gilded and then cut into strips which are then spun around a fibrous core. This method was likely invented in the 11th century and was both a much cheaper way to produce gold threads and it reduced the weight considerably. These threads were hugely popular and used in great quantities. These threads are commonly called Cypriot gold. However, new research by David Jacoby suggests that this is a misnomer. Furthermore, historical documents suggest that this type of thread was not at all cheap. Jacoby pushes for further research into the compositions of the alloys of the surviving gold threads as well as the identification of their cores and animal tissues to identify their origins. This would indeed make for exciting research and answer many questions regarding the how, where and when.

If you are interested in the topic, do click the links for the Jacoby and Katzani papers as they make for interesting and detailed reading. They also provide lots of further papers in their references.

Sources:
Friedrich W. L., et al., (2006): Santorini eruption radiocarbon dated to 1627–1600 BC., Science 312, p. 548–548.
Jacoby, D., (2014): Cypriot Gold Thread in Late Medieval Silk Weaving and Embroidery. In: S. B. Edgington and H. J. Nicholson (eds), Deeds Done Beyond the Sea: Essays on William of Tyre, Cyprus and the gate Military Orders, p. 101-114.
Karatzani, A., (2014): Metal thread: the historical development. Keynote lecture at the conference "Traditional Textile Craft - An Intangible Cultural Heritage?", The Jordan Museum, Amman.
Stern, D.H., (1998): Complete Jewish Bible. Jewish New Testament Publications.