I hadn’t been at Plimoth when the new Patterns of Fashion 4 preview was viewed and so was very excited today when my package came from Plimoth with my order (benefiting the jacket project – get yours now).

WOW. I am very grateful to Jenny Tiramani and Santina Levey for finishing this book for Janet and bringing this set of her research to our eyes. I have just finished my first totally absorbing poring over the contents. The pictures are stunning.

Janet Arnold was Joanna Hill’s advisor and Joanna has been conserving the EC sampler at Plimoth which the readers of the blog have generously made happen through their contributions. Joanna has told me numerous times how much she had wished that the publishers of Janet’s many volumes would have included color and large photographs of the objects. In her opinion “Queen Elizabeth’s Wardrobe Unlocked” would have made the most stunning coffee table book and an elaborate use of color would have lived up to the tremendous research that the volume contains. I agree. And Macmillian/QSM must have heard some of those rumblings. There are far more color photos and close ups than I would ever have expected in this book almost 1/2 the volume is color photographs. Kudos to them!

The book has something for everyone and covers those mysterious details that many of us have wondered about for a long time. There are close pictures of embroidery, lace, finishing details, ruffs, armatures, clothing, portraits, etc. I now totally understand how all those funny lace collars you see in so many portraits happened. If you have any of Janet’s publications in your library, you have to add this one to the mix. Just buy it, support the Jacket project, wrap it and put it under the Christmas tree marked “From Santa”. You will be glad you did.

Tricia

Wow. That was faster delivery than I could have expected, even from our crack Retail Mail Order team. Thanks to everyone who has ordered, and enjoy!

Have you heard that the new Janet Arnold book, Patterns of Fashion 4: The cut and construction of linen shirts, smocks, neckwear, headwear and accessories for men and women c.1540-1660 is finally really being released?

If you haven’t heard, take a deep breath.

Janet Arnold died unexpectedly in 1998, and since then the historic clothing world has periodically buzzed with rumors that her linen book would be out “soon”.

This time it isn’t a rumor. A review copy sits on the desk before me as I write, thanks to Susanna, our book buyer, and Karin, Plimoth’s library custodian, both of whom let me have first peek. Let me assure you, it has been worth the wait. Unlike the first 3 books in the Patterns of Fashion series, this one has color pictures. Black & white ones, too, but lots of color. This is excellent because many of the shirts, smocks, coifs, drawers, etc, have embroidery on them. In many cases the photos are clear enough to see the motifs; in others Janet has illustrated parts of repeating motifs or entire isolated ones. There is a wealth of detail about seam treatments and other construction details, and of course the patterns on graphed pages with Janet’s own invaluable notes. The interesting thing to me about this volume is that since she never finished it there are places where her guesses or questions to herself have been left in by Jenny Tiramani and Santina Levey, who organized the material and at last brought the book to publication.

Amazon is taking advance orders, but I have a BETTER deal for you — a chance to buy yourself a book you know you want AND support a very good cause all at the same time.

Right now Plimoth Plantation’s mail order department is taking orders for this book for $49.95 plus $8.95 shipping. The proceeds of these sales, as all retail sales at Plimoth, will directly support Plimoth’s programs. (So every time you buy some of those yummy chocolate covered cranberries, you’re helping put shoes on an interpreter, for instance.)

You can feel good knowing A) this awesome book is on it’s way to you and B) your money is going to a cause you support. We still need a few supplies to finish up the jacket, namely thread, sequins (oes), needles, plus we’re planning, and beginning to pay for, the exhibit that will go with the finished jacket – the mannequin upon which it will be mounted, the petticoat, the explanatory panels, the case to put it in, all those things that will make it possible for the public to see and experience this marvelous piece first hand – and will let us travel her to other museums and institutions so YOU can see her first hand.

To order, you can access the mail order gift shop through the website at www.plimoth.org You can also contact the retail department directly at 1-800-262-9356 X 8204 or X 8332 Nicole Hallahan is in charge of retail mail order and you can reach her at nhallahan@plimoth.org

I’d like to ask our regular readers from the SCA to please share this information with your fellows – I think many of them will want this book and might be glad to have their money to this excellent project rather than to a faceless megacorp.

The review copy was hijacked by us arrived in the office during the last embroidery session; in the photo from left that’s Carli, Debbie, me and Lyn admiring. It took a supreme effort to prevent myself from hogging the book in an unseemly fashion.

As always, thanks.

Tonight we have two more sets of stitch instructions: trellis stitch and spiral trellis stitch. Remember, you don’t have to be perfect at every stitch; you don’t even have to do every stitch on the sample. If you have one stitch you love and are great at, just do that one.

And another book review:

King, Donald and Santina Levey. The Victoria & AlbertMuseum’s Textile Collection: Embroidery in Britain from 1200 to 1750.New York: Canopy Books. 1993.

This volume is almost entirely color plates. The few pages of text form a brief overview of British embroidery, and because it covers 350 years it is very much an overview. The book also contains a glossary and diagrams of some common stitches. The diagrams are nice to have but are not really instructive in that these alone won’t enable one to reproduce a piece of embroidery. But that isn’t the point of this book. The point is the many color reproductions of embroideries in the V & A collections excellent for reference and inspiration.

And, if you have this on your shelf, you can turn to page 63 and see a larger-than-life image of the embroidery pattern we’ll be using on our recreated jacket. See, right in the middle there, where we took the pattern for the embroidery on the header for this blog.

I’ve gotten a couple of questions about this sample piece lately, so I thought today I’d tell you how it came to be. Once we determined that we wanted to do this jacket thing, we needed to create a plan, including a budget. In order to do that we had to know how long it would take to create this jacket. At the same time (this was late fall, 2006) Plimoth Plantation was working with a Marketing consultant to create a packet of information and images that we could use in applications for grants and other funding proposals to support the planned exhibit (of which the jacket would be a part). We needed to include images of a sample of the embroidery that would be on the jacket.

Fulfilling the two needs in an extremely efficient fashion, we traced off a bit of this pattern from V&A 1359-1900 (later we discovered it is reproduced on this page larger than the original). At this point we had not even begun to talk about what jacket, what embroidery pattern, or anything like that. It is purely a coincidence that the sample piece is from the same pattern we ended up choosing for the real jacket. Tricia made her most educated guess at the stitches used, based on close examination of this picture and having studied other 17^th century embroideries in person, and worked the sample accordingly.

So after she had taken it away to work on, our consultant asked what color it was. Well, I said, there’s a blue flower and a bird, in green and yellow, I think (not having the book at the meeting). Red, he replied. Something has to be red. Red is good. Red is attractive. Okay, I said, let me see what I can do. I hustled right out of that meeting and phoned Tricia who fortunately hadn’t started stitching the flower.

Our estimate of 2000-2500 hours to accomplish the embroidery comes from Tricia’s timing of the stitching of this piece. And the photographs came out so nicely (thanks to the talent of the photographer, Ed Nute) that they’ve been used and used and used.

But that’s why what clearly ought to be a blue borage flower (fairly common on embroideries of this period, and a familiar friend to those who study them) is red, red, red. The fact that red is my favorite color had absolutely nothing to do with it, I swear.

AND, the borage flowers on the real jacket will be their proper blue, but more on that another day.

Bad news first. There’s nothing new on the linen front. Despite all efforts, the linen is trapped until a government official gets to it, which might be tomorrow and might be six months from now.

We’re working on contingency plans, one of which involves choosing a completely different linen from a different manufacturer, one whose US distributor has a piece large enough for us in stock. The second, and now the favored plan, involves buying up all the remnants of the chosen linen in the US and trying to get the whole jacket from the biggest piece. I’m a little concerned about dye lots, but have an idea for compensating should we have to use two pieces from separate bolts. I’m not hugely worried; too many things have fallen into place in order to make this project work for this to derail us now.

Now the good news – treats! Tricia sent instructions for reverse chain stitch and Ceylon stitch, two stitches we’ll be using on the jacket (more stitch instructions over the next days). Rummage out some cloth, needle and thread and give it a try. (You’ll need Adobe to open these.)

Great strides were made today on the schedule for the June embroidery session. We’ll have a presentation by Kathleen Curtin, Plimoth Plantation foodways historian and author of Giving Thanks: Thanksgiving Recipes and History from Pilgrims to Pumpkin Pie. She’s an entertaining speaker, and knows more about the foodways of the 1620s English Colonists than just about anybody. We’ll also have a tour of Plimoth Plantation’s collection led by Karin Goldstein, Curator of Original Artifacts. Karin will show us Plimoth Plantation’s two 17^th century samplers and some sewing-related items. And, Tricia has generously offered to teach a small project. I’m working on more fun activities for the non-stitching time.

So hopefully the progress I made on the schedule excuses me for never making it out of the office. The gravitational pull of the telephone and email were just too much for me. I humbly offer you a picture of fitting a jacket to one of the role-players. This was taken in the fall of 2005. This pink wool jacket is cut from a pattern taken from an embroidered linen waistcoat in the Burrell Collection in Glasgow, Scotland. The shape of the pattern pieces is very similar to that of the Laton jacket at the V & A. On page 121 of Janet Arnold’s Patterns of Fashion: the cut and construction of clothes for men and women 1560-1620, are the patterns for both jackets, drawn on graphed paper.

YAY! This is just what I was hoping this blog could be. PF left a comment to let us know that some records of the Embroiderers’ Company DO survive from before the fire – see below.

“Some of the records of the Embroiderers’ Company of London (called “Broderers’ Company”) do survive from before the great fire. The minute books don’t start until 1679, but the receipt books include some records from 1557-1640. The Family History Library has these London records on microfilm, (FHL BRITISH Film 1068861) and they can be ordered from Salt Lake City to be viewed at your local FHL (the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints).”

I had read in more than one book that ‘the records were lost’ and never looked into it, which just goes to show you shouldn’t just believe everything you read. Has anybody read through them?

To keep on this bibliographical theme, I’m going to offer a review of one of the books we’ve consulted as we researched this project.

Epstein, Kathleen. British Embroidery: Curious Works from the Seventeenth Century. Austin, TX: Curious Works Press and Williamsburg, VA: Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. 1998.

This volume was created as the companion to an exhibit of the same name which was displayed at Colonial Williamsburg in 1998-99. It is thoroughly illustrated, with many color plates, but it is more than an exhibit catalogue. The text is an excellent introduction to 17^th-century British needlework. Not only does it describe the different sorts of embroidery but it explains who was embroidering, how they learned the skills, and begins to plumb the depths of the importance of embroidery to this society. The only defect, really, is that it is too short. I wished for more information on the materials of embroidery and where they came from. But that’s just quibbling with an excellent book, well worth reading.

This squirrel is from the same coif as the bluebird. The coif was designed and worked by members of the Colonial Wardrobe Department in the mid 1990s. It was a tour de force at the time, and we were justly proud of it. However, I’m also proud to say that we’ve come a long way, baby, since then. I wouldn’t do that project the same way now, we’ve learned too much in the mean time. But it remains a beautiful object, full of the skilled work of human hands.