In the British Museum collection there is a fragment of Chancay open weave darning. The cloth is believed to come from the Chancay culture in Peru and dates from sometime between 900 – 1430 AD. It derives from burial excavations in the Pacasmayo Valley carried out in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The design on this textile consists of alternating, diagonal rows of feline and fish motifs.
Chancay open weave darning is a form of darned embroidery, in which the open weave gauze ground is decorated using both thick and thin white cotton threads. The outlines of the individual motifs are worked into the gauze ground. They are made with a thick thread that is looped and/or worked around the ground mesh intersections using a long stem stitch.
In the British Museum, London (Oc1848,0216.1), there is a sampler that comes from a missionary school in Samoa, one of the Pacific Ocean group of islands. It is 31 x 21 cm in size and dates to about 1844. The sampler is in a traditional, North European form with rows of letters and numbers worked in cross stitch using red and blue woollen thread on a linen ground.
An early form of a needlework sample (often classed as a sampler) from Nasca, Peru, is kept in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (USA). The sample dates to the second century BC. It is 105 x 72 cm in size. A sample is a piece of cloth on which motifs and stitches are worked out in a random manner. The aim of this type of textile is to act as a private ‘sketch pad’ to remind the embroiderer of techniques and ideas.
The British Museum in London houses a remarkable, decorated camel saddle cloth (acc. no. Af1947,15.4). It comes from Ethiopia and dates to the first half of the twentieth century. The ground cloth is 107 x 83 cm in size and is made from orange cotton with appliqué green leather strips.
Ghulam Haidar Khan was a son of Dost Mohammed Khan, emir of Afghanistan. This lithograph is by E. Walker and based on the work of James Rattray (1818-1854), who joint the British Indian forces that invaded Afghanistan in 1838 during the First Anglo-Afghan War (1838-1842) and who made numerous drawings and water colours of Afghanistan and its people.
In the Royal Collection (London, UK) there is a small embroidered bag or purse that was used to carry scented substances. Such bags, and the contents, were called pomanders. The English word pomander derives from the French pomme d’ambre (lit. ‘apple of amber’), and was used for a mixture of various aromatic substances usually formed into a ball.
In the Royal Collection, London, UK, there is an example of an embroidered sabretache, which was a cavalry officer’s satchel. This style of sabretache is associated with the Light Dragoons, a British cavalry regiment. A sabretache is a flat pouch or satchel with long straps worn by some cavalry and horse artillery officers from the left of the waist belt near to the officer’s sabre.
A sabretache is a flat, leather pouch or satchel with long straps traditionally worn by some cavalry and horse artillery officers from the left-hand side of the waist belt near to the officer’s sabre. The term sabretache is an early nineteenth century term that derives from the German word Säbeltasche (Säbel ‘sabre’ and Tasche ‘pocket’) and the French version sabretache.
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Fragments are kept in the British Museum, London (acc. no. 1856,0819.1), of a linen bag decorated with appliqué and silk embroidery. They are all that is left of a Great Seal bag of King Henry III, who reigned in England from 1216 to 1272.
The Kenyan actress, Lupita Nyong’o (b. 1983), wore a long, holder-necked dress decorated with applied pearls to the Oscar film award ceremonies on 22nd February 2015. In 2013 she had won an Oscar for her role as Patsey in "12 Years a Slave" and she was one of the presenters at the 2015 event.
The Mahdi flag now in the British Museum, London (BM acc. no. AF1949,46.694.b) represents a particular type of flag used by the Mahdi and his followers in the late nineteenth century. The Mahdi army used two types of flags to indicate the position of their leaders.
This tunic in the collection of the British Museum is part of an outfit associated with Osman Digna (c. 1840-1926), who was a follower of Muhammad Ahmad (the Mahdi), in Sudan. Osman Digna was regarded as one of the ablest generals in the Mahdi army. In 1899 he fought in the last campaign of the Mahdist forces. In 1900 he was captured near Tokar and was to serve eight years in prison in Egypt. He died there in 1926.