The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam houses a part of a wall covering made of cloth embroidered with a coronation scene of Louis XIV of France. The wall covering dates to the second half of the seventeenth century and may be based on the work of the French artist, Simon Vouet (1590-1649). The covering is made of a linen ground, with gold, silver and silk thread embroidery and fake gemstones.

The Embroiderers' Guild in the UK organised what would become the world's longest embroidery. The Guild did so to mark its 100th anniversary. Work started in 2003 and in 2009 it measured more than 605 metres, and thereby set a new Guinness World Record. The embroidery was hand worked by some 7000 embroiderers from all over the world.

The Raven Crown is the name of the royal crown worn by the King of Bhutan. The design of the crown dates to the late nineteenth century and was developed for the father of the first king of the Wangchuck dynasty of Bhutan (Gongsar Ugyen Wangchuck, 1862–1926), who came to power in 1907.

The Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan has a tradition of making special boots that mark the position and function of the wearer. The boots, locally called tshoglham, were originally made of silk cloth, but by the twentieth century more often in combination with leather. Some of the boots are left undecorated, but others are ornamented with appliqué and embroidery.

In the first half of 2018, the Textile Research Centre in Leiden, The Netherlands, set up an exhibition about printed and embroidered feedsacks.These items reflect a story of resilience, female ingenuity, thriftiness, sustainability, art and design, national awareness, as well as economic and commercial insight for nearly fifty years, from the 1920’s to the 1960’s. It is an amazing story, and one that is now barely known outside of the US.

The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio, houses a robe for an actor in the Japanese Noh theatre. it dates to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and is made of silk with silk thread embroidery and gold leaf applications. The robe measures 164 x 138 cm.


The robe is embroidered with satin and outline stitches and couching. The decoration includes weeping cherry trees and irises in the snow. The gold leaf decoration would indicate that the male actor wearing this robe (which was worn underneath another garment) was playing a female role.

See also the Noh Theatre robe now housed in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (acc. no. T.297-1963).

Cleveland Museum of Art online catalogue (retrieved 6th September 2017).

WV

The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio, has a bride's robe from nineteenth century Korea. It is made of silk with silk thread embroidery; the edges are wrapped with paper. It measures 114 x 174 cm.

Tne Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio, USA, holds a coloured woodblock print by Utamaro II (Koikawa Shunchō) and is dated to 1808. It measures 38 x 26 cm. It is one in a series called Instructive Patterns for Women's Handicrafts, and refers to the craft of Chinese embroidery.

The Godfrey Shawl is now housed in the National Gallery of Australia. It was made in the second half of the nineteenth century from cashmere wool and embroidered with a representation of the Kashmir capital of Srinagar. It measures 208 x 185 cm.

The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio, USA, houses a suzani with floral sprays, which has been dated to the first half of the nineteenth century. The suzani is made of six strips of a cotton material, embroidered with silk thread and worked in filling stitch (kanda xajol or bosma) and outline stitch (ilmoq).

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