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The TRC in Leiden has just finished a 1-day study day on the theme of ‘What is embroidery’ (29 July 2020) and a 5-day intensive textile course (17-21 August), which also included a session about the basic nature of embroidery. What is actually required to make a piece of embroidery? What tools are needed? Which stitches are used? When is this form of decoration actually carried out? And what is it used for, and how?

The general consensus was that (technically) embroidery is worked on a finished piece of material (whether it is woven, non-woven, leather, etc), using some form of yarn, with one or more stitches, worked with a needle, a hook or a similar tool.

Embroidered part of a woman's headdress from late 20th century Yemen (TRC 2015.0610).

But there are always exceptions!

Next to a series of 17th century Portuguese cross stitch charts that will appear in the forthcoming volume of the Encyclopedia of Embroidery (Scandinavia and Western Europe; Bloomsbury 2021/2022) and that were discussed in a separate blog, we will also be using a German pattern book that was published in about 1742.

On Sunday, 23rd August 2020, Gillian Vogelsang wrote:

As part of the work being carried out at the TRC in Leiden, on volume 3 of Bloomsbury's Encyclopedia of Embroidery (Scandinavia and Western Europe), I came across a fascinating sample book now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (MMA 25.92).

The book dates from the early 17th century and comes from Portugal. It is filled with numerous small pieces of actual embroidery worked on a linen ground using silk yarns in various colours. The samples were stitched together and then made into the booklet that is loosely bound.

Who did this is unknown, but he or she created a fascinating compendium of stitches and designs used in early 17th century Portugal. A variety of stitches are represented in the book, including cross stitch, satin stitch, bullion stitch, double running stitch (Holbein stitch), various types of knots, as well as reticello and drawn thread work.

Some examples of geometric patterns, which were worked in cross stitch, are given below:

Embroidered picture from the mid-nineteenth century, showing Judith and her servant; The Netherlands (?) (TRC 2020.3320).The TRC Leiden has recently been given a number of embroidered pictures by the Bijbels Museum, Amsterdam. We wrote a separate blog about this donation. One panel is especially large (135 x 105 cm) and depicts a lady in a low cut, ornate dress with an elderly woman carrying a white bag (TRC 2020.3320). The woman is pointing to a city on a hill top and a series of tents just below the city walls.

Mid-17th century ciselé velvet sample with huinting dogs, from Italy (TRC 2011.0385).In 2011 the TRC Leiden was given a collection of early European velvets by Ms. Van Gerwen. They came from her father's private museum of medieval art. These pieces have intrigued me ever since. Although I specialise in hand embroidery, I have long wanted to go deeper into the history of velvets and to gain a better understanding of the various different types. Not so much as how exactly each form was made and the (many) technical and mechanical intricacies that were involved, but in more general terms to try and follow the history of the designs associated with them as well as the function of these luxury textiles.

The Van Gerwen collection includes thirty examples of early velvets that probably date back to at least the fourteenth century with most of the pieces dating to the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries (with a few nineteenth century copies of earlier forms). There are also examples of plain, chiselé (cut and uncut), and voided textiles, and some that include silver and gold threads in the main designs and in the backgrounds.

Modern example of tissu Provencal (TRC 2020.3198).There has been considerable attention over the years for a typical type of Indian cloth generally called chintz (sitz in Dutch), its  European copies, and the popularity of these textiles in Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Museums such as the Victoria and Albert (London), the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), as well as various smaller institutions have all had exhibitions that highlight the economic, social, technical and artistic role of these textiles.

Worteldoek from The Netherlands, mid-20th century (TRC 2019.2237).Often the TRC Blog looks at textiles or clothing from ‘exotic’ countries, but we have been receiving various messages about how good it is to know about European textiles, such as the Romanian dress and the British sampler from the mid-eighteenth century. So over the next few weeks some of the TRC blogs (appropriately called 'Textile Moments') are going to be about various European textiles and the stories behind them. And yes, there will be an ‘exotic’ element to many of them!

We want to celebrate adoption and adaption, and the creative nature of humans, rather than taking a narrow view of the world by saying ‘it’s from my culture, hands off’ (something that would have been regarded as very strange and unnatural by many in the past). Sadly, the opposition against cultural appropriation does at times take extreme forms.

Photograph of Martha Ann Ricks, July 1892, National Gallery, London.What are the links between an ex-slave called Martha Ricks, the British Queen Victoria (1819-1901) and an unsolved mystery? The answer is a hand-stitched white satin quilt that was personally presented by the quilter to the Queen at Windsor Castle, in July 1892.

This is a fascinating story that provides extra background to the ongoing American Quilts exhibition at the TRC in Leiden. The same story featured prominently in a 2017 BBC World Service documentary called “Looking for Aunt Martha’s Quilt”, which described the attempt by the family of the quilter, Martha Ricks, to trace the quilt that has long been lost. Here is the story:

Martha Ann Erskine Ricks (d. 1901) was born into slavery in the USA, around 1817. Her father worked to buy his, his wife’s and their seven children’s freedom. When Martha was 13 the family sailed to Liberia. Within a year only Martha and her two brothers remained alive. Martha married and helped manage a farm where she grew coffee, cacao, sugar cane and ginger.

In her 40s, she won a national prize for a pair of cotton silk socks she made from her own cotton and the fibre of the cotton silk tree. Throughout all this time she nourished a dream—to meet a woman she admired for her help to end slavery. Martha was mocked by neighbours and her husband alike, because the woman she wanted to meet was none other than the British monarch, Queen Victoria.