Tonight Tricia finishes the story begun in yesterday’s post of how the pattern for the embroidered jacket was drafted. This story is just one example of the many things we’re learning by doing that might not have been discovered just by studying existing examples.

Well, after a long day of trying to come up with the right master pattern, Denise and I called it quits. I took the materials home and was to start again with a fresh vine tracing. As you can see in the photo, I covered the dining room table with pictures and kept staring at the sleeves, front, and back trying to work out what was going on with the piece. All of a sudden I could ’see it’ - a nice 3 x 4 coil block. The repeat leapt out at me and I quickly sketched it out. Then I took the motifs and cut them from our xeroxed tracings. Even though I assumed that I would have to totally redo the vine tracing because we had taken that from the EG panel, I placed the motifs in order on top of it. To my amazement it worked perfectly! I was stunned. Not only did the two historic pieces share many motifs and a very close stitch/color vocabulary - but they seemed to be built on the same coiling stem pattern. This is another piece of circumstantial evidence which leads to a conclusion that these pieces were worked from the same professional workshop.

From the experience, I conjecture that the following MIGHT be how some of these pieces were designed. A master coiling stem pattern would be drawn up by a draftsman on staff and would reside at the company. A set of standard motifs would then be available to choose from to place on this vine depending on the purpose of the intended object or the whim of the customer. That way some customization was available with with very little original design work.Something I had seen before seemed to support this hypothesis and a well timed business trip through Washington, D.C. provided the opportunity to check a rare book again. A very expensive and rare modern reproduction of The Great Book by Thomas Trevilian (1616) resides at the Folger Library in Washington, D.C. I have been viewing this and its original cousin (1608) by the same author for years everytime I am in town. Thomas Trevilian is thought by scholars to have been a draftsman of pattern for the decorative arts - woodworkers and embroiderers primarily. In any case, he certainly had access to many patterns. It seems late in his life he sat down (twice as he didn’t expire too quick)
to record in one place patterns he knew, had in his possession, or invented. We many never know which. He also recorded well know plates from other earlier publications in his manuscripts. Plate no. 947 in The Great Book (1616) is a coiled stem design which resembles closely those used for jackets such as our source and the Laton jacket. The one
thing that had always bothered me about this plate on other visits was that it was incomplete. This was unusual as the other hundred or so plates for embroidery in the books were complete and could easily be traced and repeated. This coiled stem was missing many of the leaves and small bugs that fill the voids.

Well, after the experience of making the master for our jacket, I wonder if the Trevilian plate is closer to what the professional workshop may have used. A master vine with many motifs which could be moved around and a few of the filler leaves/fauna that could be repeated where needed. Just enough to allow the draftsman to customize the pattern for a customer.

I will leave you with those thoughts and a few answers to some questions that were posed in the comments. A reader was interested in if we would publish the pattern on the web for download. The answer is no. We have been very fortunate to have such cooperation from the many institutions which house the historic embroideries, therefore we must respect their ownership of the intellectual property and design. We have been granted a one time use of the pattern at this point. That said, if many write in with such interest, we will explore a royalty relationship with theV&A and might publish the manual we are developing to stitch the jacket complete with the patterns. What I can say now is that Thistle Threads has entered into a contract with the V&A to adapt the jacket pattern into a series of kits using the same materials. These pieces will range from smalls to a larger piece that uses much of the repeat pattern. The kits will come out sometime in the early fall and will help to support both the V&A and Plimoth Plantation with part of the proceeds.This is the same reason why there aren’t any non-public domain historical pictures up yet on the blog. We are negotiating with the institutions for permission to use the photos we took of their collections on the blog. We really hope we will be able to do that in the future. Until then you may need to find a referenced book to see some of these beautiful images.

Tricia

Tags: master pattern, tracing, Trevilian, V and A

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 3rd, 2007 at 8:56 pm and is filed under Materials. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.