On the Shores of St Nick: progress

13/12/2021

As we have typical winter weather here in southern Bavaria, I decided to use my Sunday for some uninterrupted me-stitching. No work on course samples, lectures, my website, administration etc. Just me and my needle. And apart from doing laundry, cooking lunch and baking bread, it was indeed uninterrupted :). To show you my progress on the or nue on St Nick, I decided to take a picture at the top of every hour. Enjoy!

For the or nue on St Nick, I am using Stech vergoldet 80/90 by M. Maurer which is comparable to gilt passing thread #4. As the silk in or nue covers most of the gold foil, I like to use up all those pieces of goldthread that are no longer in pristine condition. The silk I am using is Chinese flat silk from Oriental Cultures.

On Saturday evening, I lectured on the origins of or nue for the Embroiderers' Guild of America. The week before, I held a lecture on the development of medieval embroidery for the San Francisco School of Needlework and Design. Both lectures were very well attended and a great success. Personally, I really like the Q&A at the end. It sharpens my mind and offers new perspectives.

If you would like to book a lecture for your guild or embroidery group, please contact me. I am also looking into organising lectures myself. Do let me know in the comments if you would be interested. In principle, I can lecture in English, German or Dutch. It takes me about a full week to make a lecture from scratch. Now that the frameworks are up, I only need to modify them as my research progresses (or translate them, if there is a market for that). As making these lectures has been a lot of work and will continue to require some work, they will not be offered for free. Upcoming lectures are advertised on this page. Do let me know what you think!

6 Comments

Marina

13/12/2021 14:25:54

Congratulations for the lectures, that is indeed a lot of preparatory work. And I bet the Q&A session can prove to be a challenge, as the attendees all have different experiences and knowledge.
I would absolutely attend a lecture of yours (not in the daytime, though) and I would gladly pay a fee for attending. I would also watch a recorded video of the lecture for a (reduced?) fee. Your skills are absolutely amazing, so learning from you is a real treat and a true privilege, as I don't have time to do that research myself. Thank you for your efforts and your enthusiasm!

Dr. Jessica Grimm link

14/12/2021 08:52:56

Actually, the Q&A is always my favourite part. It reminds me of the public defense of my doctoral thesis :). And it almost always plants new ideas in my head that I can follow up on.
Thank you for your thoughts on possible lectures. It looks, however, that you are the only one interested. I'll put the idea of organising my own lectures to bed for now.

Rachel link

13/12/2021 18:31:42

If the Q&A was good, I always reckon that means it was a really good talk - informative enough to start new thoughts, but not so full of detail as to leave the attendees stunned!

So, well done!

14/12/2021 08:48:53

Thank you, Rachel! I find them very beneficial as I am mostly working on my own. Having a conversation is really nice.

Catherine Kyngdon

13/12/2021 18:41:12

Dear Jessica,
I have been following your blog for many years now and am very impressed with the wonderful progress you have made with your goldwork embroidery investigations.
Reading your article for the Medieval Embroidery blog was very informative and revealing and it goes to show that we really don't know much about the embroidery process back then nor give the amount of respect to the craftsmen (and women) who lived hundreds of years ago.
It was also very interesting to read how Johannes Nigisch worked out how figures were made for embroideries 500 years ago and how the technique for St Nick's gridiron (very impressive!!) were widely known in Germany and Italy well before the Elizabethan stumpwork time.
Wishing you a very Happy Christmas,
Catherine

14/12/2021 08:50:07

Thank you for your kind words, Catherine!

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