Before I get into details, I must thank the people who helped me immensely by taking time to host me for the appointments. First, Lynn Szygenda, Senior Curator at the Embroiderers’ Guild and Chris Berry, Past President of the EG.  Chris happened to be down in London on business this week and took time out to join me in the examination of the panel.  Chris is an expert on Tudor embroidery stitches and I was very pleased to finally meet her.  Having more experts at the table examining a piece is fantastic because you can both look at the same detail and debate them.  Sometimes your first conclusion will be wrong or there might be other data that one of you is aware of that can help make a new hypothesis.  Chris volunteers in the collection at the Burrell Collection and has a wealth of knowledge to share.

We had a lot of fun; I had my laptop full of my research photos next to the piece.  Lynn and Chris spent hours poring through the photos, including ones that we had from the V&A of the 1359-1900 jacket which Susan North had provided us with.  We could compare and contrast the
two pieces some.

My second thank you goes to Susan North, Curator of Costume at the V&A.  Susan took a great deal of time to help me move the jackets for photography.  As we discussed and debated what we saw, she would bring out other items to prove her point or to help answer the questions we had jointly proposed.  Susan is working with colleagues to produce a pattern book based on clothing of this period.  While it won’t be completed in time for this project, she and another colleague have been examining the Laton jackets and others (yes they were also on the table) for evidence of construction techniques.  This is the reason Laton was out of the case.  They were very generous to share their thoughts and to show me the evidence on each of the jackets to support it.  Because multiple professionals (embroiderers vs. tailors and/or other professional craftsmen, as well as multiple embroiderers - jmh) were involved in the process of making a jacket, we had a lively debate on which parts were performed by each and how the money/work may have transitioned.  I will comment more on this in a future blog.

I am sorry that I have very little eye candy that I can share with you on the internet from this trip, but here you can see Lynn (back), Chris (foreground) and me with the panel.

Tricia

I’ve only ever seen photos of the panel with no context - I was surprised how small it is. jmh

I got this from Tricia this morning:

I am writing this blog on the plane on my way back to the states from London. What can I say but “WOW”. I’ve been to London before and seen many embroideries in wonderful museums. This time was different, I was able to view the pieces up close that we have been working from since November 2006. It is a significantly different experience to examine period embroidery from a research view, as I normally do, and then from the new perspective of having tried to accurately reproduce the pieces. You come to them with the challenges you faced in organizing the work and having gotten inside the head of the embroiderers who worked on the original. You don’t see the forest anymore, but the leaves on all the trees and immediately the variations between them. You have an enhanced knowledge of it so you aren’t numbed by its sheer beauty, but can take a real critical eye and SEE things.

Before the readers of the blog wonder why we haven’t seen them before, because it certainly should have been the first step in mounting the project, I will explain. Through a series of circumstances, the project has been unfunded and therefore there was never any money to travel. This was my own personal odyssey and tacked onto a trip that I had planned for other reasons.

I spent Wednesday at the Embroiderers’ Guild viewing the panel which we believe was worked by the same workshop as the jacket. Then Thursday at the V&A viewing our jacket, 1359-1900. But I had the biggest surprise of my life, the Margaret Laton jacket had been taken off display and had been unmounted for research for an upcoming book. We placed the two jackets side by side and I took 750 photos. Maybe Jill* will blog about her surprise when I emailed from the storage room frantically hoping that they would get it before I was done. I emailed Wendy too - and she called Jill direct to let her know. A once in a lifetime opportunity to get pictures of the construction and lace before it is remounted. “What do you want to know??” I asked. A flurry of email came back with tons of fantastic questions. Thank god for the mobile devices of today!!

I think I will have easily a week of blogs for you. I so wish I could share the pictures, but I will describe what I learned and saw.

Tricia

*Jill here. My son and I have been playing a sort of (unintentional) roulette game, seeing how late we can get out of bed and still get him on the bus. Earlier this week the phone rang in the middle of the quick-quick-get-your-backpack-and-run routine. It was Wendy. She sounded sleepy. I know I sounded sleepy. She said she’d just opened a message from Tricia “the Laton is unmounted on the table in front of me! What do we want to know? Make sure Jill sees this!” Wendy had found the note about an hour and a half after Tricia sent it, so she wasn’t sure if Tricia was still in the room with the jacket. She sent off a note with what she could think of, then called me, which was very smart, since I never get around to opening emails until about 9:30 or 10, which would’ve been another hour at least. I mentioned as many things as I could think of, fretted that we must be forgetting something, and needlessly, I’m sure, said, tell her to take pictures of everything! “I hope she has extra memory cards,” Wendy replied, then hung up to send off another email. Luckily they both reached Tricia while she was still in with the jacket. 15 minutes later the Boy was on the bus and I was on my way to work, thinking the whole way about what she might be discovering. I can’t wait to see and hear all about it.

I got a note from Tricia today. She’s in the UK, on a special birthday trip with a couple of friends. In addition to sightseeing and spa visits, she spent some quality time with the EG panel.

The Embroiderers’ Guild in the UK owns a flat panel of embroidery which has sometimes been called a coif and sometimes a cushion. Either way, it is the same embroidery pattern as our jacket and as the V&A jacket #1359-1900. Because this panel is flat, studying photos of it back in the winter of 2007 helped Tricia to see the master pattern repeat of the jacket, which then made it easier to transfer the pattern to the jacket pieces. The panel helped, but the process still involved several hours at least of staring and thinking and comparing and considering before the master repeat revealed itself.

She said that she’s got some great photos of the bird beaks and feet, and she’s ready to start work on the birds when she gets back. She also said that the flowers on the flat panel are stuffed, and she’s curious to see if they are on the jacket also, which she’ll be visiting tomorrow (today by the time you read this, I expect).

She’s already taken over 350 photos and will have lots to share with us when she gets back to an internet connection (this note came from her iPhone). I can’t wait to hear what she has to say about the jacket.

Here’s a photo of one of Sharon’s needlework treasures, that she shared at show & tell this last session.

Hi everyone, I haven’t dropped off the face of the earth. Husband Away turned into Husband Home but with Appendicitis. He no longer has appendicitis, no longer has an appendix even, but I’ve been a little preoccupied. Distracted. Frazzled, as a co-worker so eloquently put it this morning. And then last night we had the Thunderstorms. Thou shalt not fire up the computer during a violent thunderstorm.

Anyway, Jill H (the lace making Jill H, as opposed to me, the non-lace making Jill H) asked about finding 1359-1900. The key is to search the V&A collections. You can’t use the search function in the upper right hand corner of their website. That searches for things like exhibits and lectures and new books. You have to click the ‘collections’ option (other options on that page are exhibits, things to do, your visit, support us, contact us, etc.). Once in the collections section, you have choices of which collection to look at. There is also a ’search the collections’ box. It’s the top left section. Click on that and you get a screen with a search box on the left. Continue to ignore the search box in the upper right. It does not love you.

The search box you want says ‘all fields’ above it, and below there are two buttons: clear field and search. Put ‘1359-1900′ in this search box and click search. This will get you the embroidery-pattern jacket. If you instead put in ‘Laton jacket’ you will get the garment-and-lace-pattern jacket. Have fun!

Emily and Lacey have been exceedingly busy while I’ve been frazzling. Lacey has made three pairs of canvas breeches and is working on her fourth. She’s also knitting mittens. Emily is making a gown for a small child who soon will be volunteering in the English Village. She’s also making a green canvas suit for one of the interpretive artisans. Emily left me a note saying that yesterday’s late-afternoon fitting with him went “swimmingly. He says the fabric is the same color as his truck. I’m assuming this is a good thing.” Hope so. Penny is taking a well-deserved looong weekend. When she comes back Monday she and Emily and Lacey will be preparing for a two-day dye fest. On Tuesday and Wednesday of next week they’ll be dyeing wool yarn with natural dyes outside the Crafts Center. I’m so excited about this, I can’t wait. If you’re in the neighborhood, come see.

Several of the stitches we’re using on the jacket have been diagrammed and illustrated by Tricia. Her directions and photos are fantastic, I think. They really helped me understand these stitches, none of which I’d ever tried before last summer.

Tricia hasn’t done up her own version of the plaited braid stitch instructions, though, and likely won’t for some time. Fortunately, Linda Connors of Calico Crossroads has, and has made them available through her website for a very small fee. Here’s a link to the searchable catalog for Calico Crossroads. Put in plaited braid stitch and it should come up; if not email Linda for help.

If you want to see images of the two original jackets we’re using for this project, go to the V&A website, to the collections page. Go to the ’search collections’ feature. In the search box type “Laton jacket” for many pictures of this jacket and the portrait of Margaret Laton wearing it. This jacket is the source of the garment pattern and the lace that we’re reproducing. To see the jacket bearing the embroidery pattern, put “1359-1900″ in the search field. There are fewer pictures of this one available, but they’re gorgeous.