Day One of Session One is history and went very well. I was really more nervous about yesterday, when so much had to be done. Today was just meeting lovely people I’d only corresponded with, or at most talked with on the phone.

Much of the morning was spent in introductions, ground rules (NO COFFEE NEAR THE WORK AREA), and adjusting frames, lights, and magnifiers. Tricia assigned work stations and got everyone started. It seemed like that first stitching was a little nerve-wracking; breaking up the white space with the first bit of colored silk is so irrevocable.

Lunch was delicious, like all the other food. Our meals are being catered by Marcia, a southern cook in the best tradition. We’re eating like princesses. Cheese & tomato tart, abundant salad, fruit, pound cake; if we’re not careful we’ll all have to be rolled out of here in a few days!

A bit of shopping was squeezed in after lunch. Volunteers receive a 10% discount in our museum shops, and a number of special treats including books, scrimshaw needlework tools, and charts, were stocked especially for the delight of the embroiderers. There are more goodies on order that will be in before the August session.

This is the back of the jacket, where Tricia has been stitching one of each motif. As she worked, she took detailed photos of the steps which she used to create instruction manuals for each station.

The only cloud in the day involved what is now called ‘the dead bird coif’. While everyone was working, Tricia began to trace the embroidery pattern onto the paper coif template. This bit is truly fascinating, as it is a glimpse into how these patterns may have been used in the 17^th century. Months ago Tricia had deciphered the ‘master pattern repeat’ of the jacket. She and Denise created a master pattern, several repeats of the pattern both vertically and horizontally which enabled them to then lay the garment pattern pieces over the embroidery pattern and trace.

Tricia had the coif-shaped paper I traced off for her and laid it over the master pattern on a light box. She was about 2/3 done when I peeked over her shoulder. She showed me how she’d moved the paper around to get the most complete repeats in strategic places. “Wow, that’s beautiful. But, umm, the birds are upside down.” The coif shape is odd, and it is really hard to see how it goes together unless you’ve made some (and sometimes even then) or worn them. In order to really see how the pattern would lie when worn, we eventually had to tape it together and put it on. Amid hearty laughter at the silly paper hat, we all agreed that, sadly, the birds were not only upside down, but with their feet in the air like that they looked dead. “It’s a lot faster to trace than embroider” Tricia observed, glad we’d discovered the mistake sooner than later.

Tomorrow I’ll have more pictures of the embroidery.

Here’s Tricia continuing the story:

For the last two entries we have been talking about the sample embroidery we worked and the insights we have gained. Another insight is that of the pattern drafting.

Remember that Denise drafted the sample pattern from the photos and I worked the embroidery. Well, I had difficulties with some of her drafting as just the perimeters of some of the shapes were taken. When examining the photos and trying to apply the same stitch to the piece, I often had to add lines so I had anchor places for my detached stitches. Take a look at the photo. The borage flower can’t be worked as one piece as the direction of the detached buttonhole has to change for each petal. So each petal needed to be drawn separately. Looking at the close-ups of this flower showed that there were ’seam lines’ if you might call them that, which were visible in the flower.Because of this, our original plan to have Denise draft the pattern and trace it to the linen had to change. An embroiderer needed to draft the master pattern to take into account the lines which needed to be added (or subtracted in the case of the butteryfly’s detached wings). Unfortunately, Denise left Plimoth before she was able to transfer the pattern to the linen - so I got to do that too…but more on that in a later blog entry.

When looking at the numerous stumpwork or tent stitch pictures worked by girls and young women, you often see pattern lines that have not been covered. If the girl bought the piece with the transfer and then chose what stitches to use, the draftsman cannot decide what lines to omit or place to aid the stitcher. In the case of the jackets, I don’t recall seeing yet any lines that are uncovered. The exception of course is where a black thread has degraded, but the needle holes are still obvious. I wonder what this says about the relationship between the draftsman and the embroiderer. We do know from primary sources that these two professions could stand alone and were not always one and the same.

As we have been surveying the jackets and coifs with coiling stems, a pattern is starting to emerge about stitch choices for particular motifs. At this point I have seen numerous birds worked in trellis and spiral trellis. Trellis also seems to be the often chosen treatment for a butterfly body. This may have been more general than at first glance and may have been a constant in a particular workshop. If a draftsman was part of the staff, he may have been familiar with the code in the shop and able to transfer a very workable pattern for use. This is just a thought - a conjecture from a limited amount of data and our own observations. A fresh look at pieces in many collections would help to build a case for these and other hypotheses that are being developed as part of this ‘living history’. We put them out there to start to solicit comments from the collective memory of the readers of this blog.

Tricia

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