LONG LOST TWINS, PART IV
I’m happy that folk are enjoying this series. These sets are some of the material I presented at my Hrim Schola talk. I did have a bit too much material to cover there (I should have requested a two-hour timeslot), so this series is filling in some of the detail I glossed over in my class.
Today’s family branches out into two colors.
The first two are both from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston:
#2 Punto di Milano, MFA Accession 92.42, 4 1/8 x 20 7/8 inches (10.5 x 53cm)
They were both part of the Denman Waldo Ross collection and the museum acknowledges the resemblance in their on line listing, but does not provide any other context for the two items, or opine as to why they might be so similar. And they are similar – not identical. Both are stitched in that pulled thread mesh-producing technique we’ve seen before, and both are green. Differences between colors on the two photos are more likely relics of the photo process or of differential fading, and do not necessarily indicate that the two started out either the same or different colors. We’d need to see the backs of the two side by side to get a better feel for original color.
Some differences are quite obvious. #1 is a single width strip, and #2 is double wide, mirrored like the strips in Friday’s post. But there are other differences. I’ve graphed out both of these for TNCM2, and they’re not spot on. The wings on the center motif in the double wide are significantly longer than the narrower version, and those little triangles at the reflection points vary oddly in treatment, being somewhat similar piece to piece to piece, but having a fair amount of variation, even within the same piece. The presence or absence of the triangles in #2 may have more to do with some very evident mistakes made by the stitcher – look how the center line meanders across the piece.
We can’t draw any conclusions based on the other obvious difference – the absence of edge patterns on the double wide strip because the museum sample was closely trimmed. It may have had companion edgings at one point, now lost to time and someone’s aggressive scissors. Note that size of the artifact is given edge to edge of the snippet, and in this case does not represent a measurement across the stitched area alone. It’s close on #2, there’s not much unstitched area left on that sample, but there’s a tiny bit more left on the single wide.
The edgings on #1 are of separate interest. It’s unusual (but not unknown) to see a piece with two different edgings, rather than the same one appearing top and bottom. I also am amused by these edging. The stitcher chose to ignore all of the difficult bits where the mesh fits in and around the leaves of the companion motifs. He or she just left those bits bare, but did so consistently across the piece so we know it wasn’t a mistake. (There is a mistake on top border of the single-wide – the first frond on the right is too short).
Were these part of the same original artifact? Perhaps a bedspread or towel, with narrow banding up the sides and a wider strip elsewhere, similar in design use proportion to this one?
It’s tempting to say so, but we can’t be certain.
Finally I’ve stumbled across another iteration of this pattern:
Frontal (detail) Victoria & Albert Museum Accession 747-1892. 17th century (made), no provenance.
This one is even more problematic. Here is the whole artifact. It’s an altar frontal, composed from pieces of older works. The V&A’s date 17th century (made) acknowledges the fact that the item is composed of earlier bits:
But you can see that the borders at the left and right of this piece are clearly our friend, the Wandering Y pattern, presented with yet another companion border, complete with occasional and illogical presence of that little triangle center hat.
What can we learn from this grouping? Again we’ve got items identified by century, which is rather wide dating window. Might the red strips in the composed altar frontal be older than that artifact’s dating, and in fact be contemporary with the green pieces? Perhaps. One rarely cuts up brand new work to reassemble into a recycled piece, and this piece is clearly pieced together in a rather eke it out and make do manner. Was the frontal assembled in Italy from Italian lacis and edging scraps, or was it made up elsewhere? Unknown. There are other examples of assembled altar pieces of this type, so they were not uncommon.
I would like to speculate that given the mistakes on the two blue-green pieces, that we have evidence here of a pattern copied by “loving hands at home.” Were they from the same source artifact? We can’t say. That conjecture is possible, and stylistically congruent with other pieces of the time, but there is no hard proof in the on-line descriptions.
Maybe there’s more detail about these works in the museum archives, or in the archives of the the D. Waldo Ross collection. Wherever those are papers are today. But again we have a grouping that spans up to 200 years, sporting a recognizable core pattern, in multiple and varying expressions.
LONG LOST TWINS, PART III
To start off, a quick revisit of Part I of this series. I’ve found another example of the same sphinx and pelican with urn design (I knew I had seen one more, I just had to remember where.) This one is also part of the Hermitage collection, a piece of lacis (darned net). Note that due to problems with my blogging engine, only the museum citation will work as a link to the artifact page.
Valence Embroidered with a Grotesque Motif. Hermitage Museum. 16th century, Italy.
So now we have a second 16th century example of this design, and proof that these patterns were used to execute multiple needlework styles. There are some differences between the details of the lacis and the voided embroidery examples I posted earlier this week. The lacis work is closer to the other Hermitage piece – the simpler of the two – but that could be because lacis does not lend itself to the fine detail that can be worked in double running.
Now on to today’s multiple. This is a fun one.
First, here’s our basic design worked as a single width strip.
And here is the same design but done up as a double width strip:
There are some minor differences in treatment between them. I can’t tell what stitch is used for the voided background of the second, but whatever it is, it is not the pulled thread mesh of the first example. And some of the interior elements of the design – the Y an O centers at the reflection lines – are filled in in the second sample, while they’re left unworked in the single width band. It may also be possible that the outline on the second sample was worked in a contrasting color silk because it appears to be darker and more crisp than the outline in the narrower example. And of course, the companion edging treatments are totally different.
But that’s not all. Here are two more examples of the same pattern, also with their Y and O centers left unworked:
Now these two are EXTREMELY close in width, proportions, background treatment, count of the main design, and of the border. Even the placement of the little dots in the border element are identical. Both were collected between 1900 and 1920, the MFA’s by D. Waldo Ross (active around that time); and the MMoA’s originating from F Fischbach in Wiesbaden, Germany in 1909.
I believe that these two are actually and truly long-lost twins. It would not be impossible for these two pieces to have been cut from the same original artifact, or from a closely matched set of originals (like two of a set of multiple matching coverpanes – sort of like oversized napkin/towels). The two snippets were thens old to two different well-heeled collectors.
As to style, unlike the second item above, the outlines of our two twins are clearly not worked in a contrasting color. This piece also has a rather nifty and individualized border, created specifically to match the center strip. Sprigs of the main design’s foliage and center element are echoed in the companion edging.
Note that in NONE of these samples does the count of the companion narrow edging have anything to do with the count of the main panel repeat. This is pretty much universal. Modern attempts to align the repeats of edging and main strip are over-fastidious efforts, a practice not seen in historical samples. To my eye aligning border and main strip removes a bit of visual spontaneity, making the whole into a more static entity. But that’s my just own aesthetic opinion. Your mileage may vary, and your own tolerance for visual disorder might be lower than mine. All is good.
What conclusions can we draw from this set? Again, minor variations in working method were totally at at the discretion of the stitcher. There were then like there are now, no embroidery police. Narrow borders were also chosen independent of the main design, and might or might not match the style or design elements of the center strip. And finally – mirroring strips to make wider bands is a totally historically legitimate method of working a deeper strip.
On dating and provenance, again these designs were very conservative, varying little over time. We’ve got another 100 years or so to play with if we go by the museum dates. Plus this won’t be the last time we’ll see pieces attributed variously as being of Italian or Greek origin. There was a very lively trade in the region, and these pieces are very hard to pin down to just one place. Plus Greek Island embroideries retained many of these patterns in active vocabulary long after similar designs had passed out of high style in Italy. Not all traditional Greek stitchery patterns are of 16th-17th century origin of course, but some do share a common lineage with Italian works of the same time.
For the record, this pattern (in single width) is among those I’m hoping to present in TNCM2.
LONG LOST TWINS, PART II
To continue our museum hopping trip viewing similar patterns, here’s another cluster Again, this is a group that to my limited knowledge is NOT based upon a graph appearing in an extant 15th ro 16th century modelbook (but I haven’t seen them all).
I’ve graphed the MMA and MFA examples (#2 and #3) for inclusion in TNCM2. I also stitched #2 in long armed cross stitch, on my big blackwork sampler:
Compare my proportions to the museum examples to see the minor distortion caused by the not-quite-even weave grounds of the historical examples, especially #1.
#1 from the PMA is cited as being worked in silk using cross and eyelet stitches (trapunto). The MFA cites #2 as being stitched in “Punto di Milano,” which is a term they use for a family of pulled thread techniques that produces a mesh-like appearance, often by use of two-sided Italian cross stitch, pulled very tightly. It’s more commonly found as a background in voided work, but pops up for foreground elements and accents, too. There is no consensus among museums on what this technique should be called. To complicate matters, there are several ways of producing the overstitched mesh background look, both single and double sided. Still the execution of these are very close, and both look to have been done using pulled thread technique rather than a withdrawn thread method.
But #1 and #2 are not pieces of the same artifact. I’ve confirmed counts between them. There are enough small differences in strip width, ground cloth thread count proportions, stitching and minor pattern details to conclude that #1 and #2 are not twins separated after birth. But they are so close that I’d opine that they were probably stitched from the same source – pattern collection sampler, printed broadside, hand-drawn pattern, or source artifact. There’s even a remote possibility that one of these is the paradigm for the other. We can’t say for sure, all we can do is note that they’re children of the same family.
Now #3 and #4 might be more closely related. The width measurement, count, proportions, form and color placement on them are extremely close. Even those nasty little skips that give the tree branch bark its texture are spot on exact in placement between the two pieces. But I can’t say for certain that they are either pieces of the same original, or photos of the same artifact. Pieces have moved between museums before, and even the most scholarly author can make a mistake in attribution. The problem is the accompanying descriptions. #3 is in Punto di Milano. But the Kendrick-Holme book specifies that #4 is “embroidered with red and green floss silks in satin and double running stitches.” Again, attributions might not be correct. I wish I could find out if #4 is still in the V&A, and get a closer look at it.
So to sum up, again we’ve got a recognizable and stable pattern, possibly spanning centuries of active use. I think the attribution on #1 is a bit early, but I have no proof. We’ve also got two and possibly three different methods of execution, and evidence that variants of the same pattern were worked in both monochrome and multiple colors. We can posit that multicolor variants came later, but we cannot flatly conclude that monochrome came first, due to the broad and overlapping range of dates given for these pieces (with the 15th century date discounted as a possibly questionable outlier).
There are lots more of these in my notebooks. I find this fascinating, but I realize that not everyone is an uber-stitch-geek like me. Please let me know if you’re bored to tears, or if you’d like to see more examples of patterns over time.
YAAY FOR MONTENEGRIN; LONG LOST TWINS PART I
Work continues on my long green sampler. I was a bit of a stall last week, but with the help of the excellent Autopsy of the Montenegrin Stitch, Exhumed by Amy Mitten, I’ve forged on ahead. The Montenegrin is what I’m using for the dark accent stripes in the interlace:
Autopsy is a small flip book that contains nothing but diagrams for two Montenegrin stitch forms, showing the order and logic of the individual stitches. How tough can that be? Plenty tough. What the book lays out is the stitch sequence for EVERY junction where horizontal, vertical and diagonals meet. As you can see from my piece, there are lots of junctions possible! This is a boutique item to be sure – not everyone leaps in and rolls around in this particular stitch style, but if you are planning a project using it, the book is well worth its its price.
It’s no secret that I’m nearing completion of my own book. I’ve got about 60 plates of patterns done. 58 of them are complete. I may or may not expand that to 62 for publication. I have to make some decisions on some out-takes and patterns that span multiple pages. I have the companion “about” pages written. I’ve got the bibliography done. I’m working on the introduction now. And as I do so, I’ll be posting related bits to String. I can’t include museum photos in the book without licensing them. But I can use links to those photos here. Much of this material is stuff I covered in my Schola lecture. But instead of running through the travelogue of styles and techniques, I want to start with the fun part. The “Long Lost Twins” examples.
Long Lost Twins Part I
The counted thread styles I’ve been working for the past three years are quite well represented in museums worldwide, largely thanks to those interested in historical embroidery between 1870 and World War II. This is the era that included both Freida Lipperheide whose pattern collection documented specific artifacts (published in 1880s), Louisa Pesel (a leading needlework researcher most active from around 1900 until her death in 1947), and Arthur Lotz who cataloged all extant modelbooks (published in 1933). There were countless other books on old lace and needlework, and collectors ranged all over Europe harvesting examples. Many of these collectors amassed impressive assemblages of artifacts, and their collections form the backbone of what’s available for view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Hermitage in St. Petersberg, the Philadelphia Museum of Art and others. We owe a lot to their diligence and enthusiasm.
However the collectors were rather more of the Indiana Jones school than we as modern stitching devotees would like. The pieces are not clearly associated with provenance or date. Often they are small snippets disassociated from the original integral artifact, so the exact nature of the item they adorned is open to discussion, and center strips that might have been used in combo with additional narrow edgings have been cut and removed from context. Styles and patterns were also relatively conservative, appearing over long spans of time. Unlike samplers which have an increasingly wide body of academic research documenting them, these (mostly) domestic embroideries have drawn lesser attention, probably because they are anonymous and problematic to date. I don’t claim to be an academic. I’m just a dilettante. But I can observe. And this series contains some of my observations.
But enough dry disclaimer. Here’s our first example of fun.
The image on the left is Valence Embroidered with a Grotesque Motif, now in the Hermitage Museum. They date it as 16th century, from Italy. It’s stitched in red silk on linen, with a pulled thread background to achieve a mesh like effect and double running stitch for the outlines and details. The whole piece is about 5×29 inches or 13x75cm, unclear if that’s with our without the fringe, or whether the photo shows the entire artifact. The Hermitage obtained this piece in 1923. The item on the right is Border, Accession 14.134.16a in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. They date it as a 17th century Italian work. I’ve only shown one repeat, but the whole two+ repeat artifact is shown on the museum photo. It’s 6.14 x 24.5 inches or 15.9 x 62.2 cm. It was acquired in 1914.
You have to admit, they’re pretty darned close. If anything the later work has a bit more detail than the earlier one (although the earlier piece shows more diligence in filling in the more difficult tiny background bits inside small diameter swirls. This usually not the way the generation to generation transcription of patterns works. Detail is usually lost, with chubby Renaissance cherubs devolving into the minimalist “boxers” on 17th century samplers. To date I have not seen this pattern in a period pattern book.
As to the iconography, the pelican vulning itself (pricking its breast to produce blood to feed its young) is a standard image of the time. The obvious allegory is self-sacrifice. The other two winged creatures are rather sphinx like to me – wings and feathers, heads of women, lion bodies. They appear to be either blowing pan-pipes or sipping on flowers, depending on which piece you are looking at. The well or giant urn and vegetative components are very standard. Large urns flanked by facing beasts or mythical figures are very common in weaving and other decorative arts of the 1500s and 1600s. So what I end up with is a piece extolling virtues of self-sacrifice and wisdom, with a vaguely feminine cast.
Now, why are these so close? I haven’t a clue. I do not know if work of this type was done at home by talented amateurs, or in workshops. The skill level to create these is relatively high by modern cross-stitch kit standards, but in truth it’s not all that difficult, and the majority of today’s dedicated counted thread stitchers would have minimal trouble achieving it. I have no doubt at all that non-professionals in the 1500s could have churned out this work in quantities sufficient to edge bed hangings, sheets, curtains, towels, or pillows. About all I can say is that they are not from the same original. There are enough minute differences between them both in pattern details and the way they were stitched to preclude them being from a matching set.
I also have no choice other than to rely on the museum’s dates. And so we see the weaknesses of the attributions inherited by the museums from the original collectors. Are they in fact close in date with one being rather late 1500s and the other being rather early 1600s? Are they contemporary, from one century or the other? No way for me to tell.
What were they originally used for? Again, these pieces are out of context. We don’t know. The Hermitage pegs theirs as being part of a valence, probably based on the presence of the fringe along the lower edge. Was this part of a bed suite? A good guess, but without pieces or fragments of the rest of the suite, there’s no way to tell. The Met’s sample is even harder to place for use. It’s been totally removed from its origins. If it had accompanying top and bottom borders (very common), or a fringe like the Hermitage piece, they’re long gone.
So what we have are two pieces officially dated up to 100 years apart, recognizably highly similar in design, worked in very similar materials and techniques, from the same general geographic area. The later one displays slightly more detail than the earlier example. We’ve got no unifying source of pattern that link them. My only conclusions are that these prove that patterns were re-used; that they were relatively conservative over time AS IF the workers were stitching from common source material either printed or stitched. I’d also say that small variations work to work validate similarly small deviations performed by modern stitchers wishing to replicate the style and design, but that’s just my own personal opinion.
I have lots more of these. Stay tuned!
SCHOLA TALK
No pix this week. The Resident Male took my preferred camera with him on a business trip overseas, and I’m not disposed to dump batteries down the gaping maw of the older camera in their joint absence.
I had a lot of fun at the Hrim Schola event in Quintavia (Marlborough, MA) this weekend past. I took both Elder and Younger Daughter, plus Younger Daughter’s Pal. The four of us did the full day of classes and workshops, pausing briefly between activities to nosh out on the offered foods and snacks. I thoroughly enjoyed the three sessions I attended – an overview of fleeces and spinning by Lady Ermengar; a lessons-learned lecture on Italian Renaissance era Perugia towels by Master Peregrine the Illuminator; and an introductory taste of withdrawn thread work given by Kasia Wasilewska. The towels come from the same period as my favorite stitching, and the motifs are very much akin to it. Whitework is on my agenda, especially the early forms of cut and withdrawn thread stitching. And anyone who’s followed here knows that knitting is my hobby-away-from-my hobby – the thing I do when I’m not stitching (and vice versa.)
The kids went to several other workshops on Viking wire weaving; basic chain mail construction (no rivets or soldering); Japanese Kumihimo braiding; combing and carding wool; hand sewing; and needle weaving. Adding in the lucets they’ve both acquired this year (plus the lucet technique book they picked up from Small Churl Books at the Schola), we now have infinitely more ways to play with string in all its forms.
As part of the day’s activities, I gave a whirlwind tour of some of the things I’ve stumbled across doing research for TNCM2.
The first part of the talk was a travelogue of some of the counted styles popular in the 1500-1650 time range. I touched on the difficulty of exact dating due to the nature of the major collections in museums – that they were mostly amassed between 1860 and 1920, by collectors whose boundless enthusiasm and interest was rather more greatly developed than their ability to pin down dates and provenances. I also mentioned that while my original goal had been to develop a chronology of techniques and styles, doing so crisply based on the meager attributions and origins was impossible. Maybe as 16th and 17th century edging and domestic embroidery scraps become as well known and appreciated as samplers, and are studied by academics armed with the latest in dating technology it will become easier, but for now chronology is rather mushy.
After the style stampede I glossed over uses – the usual: clothing, domestic linen (sheets, napery, coverpanes, cushions), liturgical items. I tried to show examples not commonly represented in books or on-line image collections.
Then the real fun began. I tried to show that some standard preconceptions about these works can be challenged in the artifact record. We looked at work that wasn’t just red or black (or blue or green); monochrome vs. polychrome works; mixed techniques; that historical linen was not always even weave by the modern definition; that stitching was most often done over 3×3 or 4×4 threads on finer linen than we use for modern 2z2 countwork. I showed examples of contrasting color outline voided pieces, and some works that were less concerned with adherence to precision pattern fidelity than they were with overall effect. And we looked at some pieces that while worked on the count, were probably drawn on the fabric freehand prior to stitching rather than being reproduced from a graph or previous piece of stitching.
After that it was a short move to the “treasure hunt” part of the talk. I have great fun finding and matching disparate works. I’ve found quite a few pieces that represent distinct pattern families. Some of these designs appear on snippets of finished works and also on specific historical samplers – not English didactic ones, on pieces I believe might have been sample sheets for professionals (my fave V&A sampler falls in this category). In other cases there are groups of finished snippets that were clearly worked from the same master pattern. Some of these have roots in German, Italian, French and English modelbooks. Others have no printed original that has descended to us, but are so close in base design that a common source must have existed. And other snippets, now widely scattered to different museums or private collections might in fact have come from the same origins, sold in small pieces to multiple collectors who visited the same European dealers.
The upshot of my talk is that there is far more variation in these pieces than modern stitchers might realize. That these variations enable a fair amount of play for those wishing to replicate a style. I’m a firm believer in studying the samples in order to internalize the deeper aesthetic and method, then using those vocabularies to produce work that is true to the time, without being a clone of a period piece. I don’t claim that my stitching embodies that ideal. My stuff is modern play-testing, assembled without regard for period aesthetic. Learning pieces at best, and not historical beyond the fact that they incorporate historical designs.
I got some good questions from the group. After TNCM2 is out, I’ll look into ateliers and professional vs. at-home stitching, and see what the academic literature has accumulated in the six or so years since the last time I went on a hunt for that info. I’ll also look more into materials, especially fingerspun floss silks. And I’ll be reworking some of the slides from the talk into blog posts, with source references, so that the small audience here can chime in, too.
I think the attendees enjoyed the talk, although in retrospect, I probably had way too much content for just one hour. I motored through at ramming speed, for sure. By the end they looked exhausted, and a bit overwhelmed. But that could have been my own exhaustion projecting itself onto them.
Needless to say, I had a great time. It was fun to find others interested in this stuff. I met quite a few people face to fact that I’d either not seen in 15 years, or who I have only known through on-line interaction (Hi guys!). I’m not a joiner, and am pretty solitary by nature. I tool along on my own, and have done so for decades. Blogging and boards bring some interaction with kindred spirits, sparks I truly appreciate. But giving the talk and interacting with the attendees was like sitting by a bonfire. If they enjoyed it half as much as I did, I’ll be extremely happy.
Oh. One last thing. Thanks to the group who put this together, running the event, scheduling the classes, manning the kitchen (very tasty!), and otherwise enabling the day. And thanks to Davey whose enthusiasm and encouragement goaded me into crawling out of my basement hole, and volunteering to do a class.
MIXED STITCH INTERLACE
Another strip well started. This one is a mixed stitch interlace, graphed out from yet another museum artifact, and another pattern that will be appearing in TNCM2:
As my dawn-lighted picture reveals, I’m working it in two passes – first setting up the double running stitch outlines, then going back and filling in the dark center stripes. After some initial experimentation, I’ve settled on using Montenegrin stitch for those stripes. Although it’s a legitimate historical stitch contemporary with this style, and is spot on in terms of raised texture and density, I’m not entirely convinced that all artifacts labeled “punto spina pesce” use it (or in fact- employ the same stitch).
Contemporary work of that name more commonly refers to plain old long-armed cross stitch (LACS) but LACS doesn’t give the raised, tightly plaited appearance of the older pieces. Plaited – yes, but the angles in LACS are more acute than those in the museum artifacts. Montenegrin is closer in terms of texture, but is also not spot on. I’ll continue to experiment, but I will finish out this band using Montenegrin, and play further on later band.
To answer Ellen, this is done on 40 count using one strand of Soie d’Alger in color 1846. As you can see from the proportions of the work however, the ground is not exactly square. The 3×8 rectangles used to “bind” the interlaces together clearly show the skew. The bottom band of pulled thread work was done over units that are 4×4 threads. The double running band above it and the one I’m working now are done over 2×2 threads – approximately 20 stitches per inch.
To answer Rachel, yes – holding large frames is a pain. I much prefer working with my small round frame. But I don’t want to compromise the silk I’m using. I use my frame stand as that extra “third hand” to hold my frame, and then stitch with one hand above and one below it. If I can get a comfortable angle, it’s actually faster than stitching using the round frame, where one hand holds the frame and the other does all the work. The round frame does provide a more even tension in all directions. I suppose I could seam on a carrying cloth edge and then lace my piece left and right to improve side to side tension on the flat frame. I’ve done that before on others. But the Millennium provides much better overall tension than my old scroll frame, and I like being able to advance work at a whim, or collapse it for transport. I would not have been able to do this type of work on my old frame without lashing the sides.
To answer Anne, I don’t as a rule endorse retail outlets, I don’t accept recompense in money or kind for anything mentioned in String, and I don’t accept “review copies” or gifts from makers/sellers hoping for positive exposure. However I will say that the source for the frame was Needle Needs in the UK. I bought my silk from Needle in a Haystack in California, and the ultimate source of my ground cloth was Hand Dyed Fibers (I bought it from the original purchaser). The needlework stand I’m using is a Grip-It, which I bought about 20 years ago at The Yarn Shop in College Park, Maryland – long out of business. I altered the Grip-It to accommodate the Millennium by replacing the original jaw bolts with longer ones. It appears that the Grip-It is no longer being made.
THISTLEATION
Marching along. As you can see, I advanced the piece on my rollers. Due to the orientation of my chair and frame stand, I’m most comfortable stitching in the lower third of the available area. Plus, being a new gizmo, I wanted to see how full slack, restacking the bars and tightening worked.
My working thread is marking the center point for the next band. That one will probably be in long armed cross stitch, worked both horizontal or vertical, and on the diagonal to create the foreground. Some museums call this “Punto Spina Pesce.” Modern stitchers probably know it better under the name Montenegrin stitch.
I’ve been having a lively discussion in another forum on useful needlework tools. In addition to the standards, I can offer up this:
Tweezers! Not just any dime store pair. I saw some specifically made for electronics assembly at work. They were so perfect, I went out and bought myself something similar. Electronics tweezers are long and pointy, with precision grip ends. The final half inch or so is nicely rounded, and is a good stand-in for a laying tool (for those who like the economy of a minimal tool set). Further up the shaft the profile switches to more of a D. On mine the 90-degree sides of the D are just sharp enough to cut through thread, so inserting the rounded end into a stitch and pushing ever so slightly will break the stitch without harming the ground cloth. Then the fine grip tweezers can be use to remove any thread detritus left over from ripping back. Electronics tweezers are available in many price ranges. Since nonmagnetic/non-conductive isn’t important for stitching, the least expensive pairs work just fine for my purposes.
I also made a blindingly obvious discovery about needles. I usually use fine tapestry style needles on ground cloth that’s 40+ threads per inch. But I often stitch those finer cloths with one strand of embroidery floss. One strand of floss has the annoying habit of falling out of the needle’s eye, something that drives me batty. But over the weekend I found these:
Ball point hand sewing needles, made for use on tricots and fine knit fabrics. You can see in the un-thumbnailed photo above that the eyes are tiny – just big enough for one strand of floss. The points are not quite as blunt as tapestry needles, but they are far less pointy than embroidery or plain-sewing sharps. They slide nicely between the threads of my ground cloth. And the small eye retains the single strand, reducing the time and annoyance of re-threading mid-work. Not orthodox perhaps, but effective.
MESHY AND THISTLES
More progress on Long Green.
You can see that I finished the mesh strip and have started on a simple double running band. The thickness of the darning on the mesh varies because I was trying out several stitching logics. I’m still working on the illustrations for the best of them, more on that to come. Also, there will be more on how these mesh styles were achieved in historical works. There look to have been several ways to do it – there is no “This is the only right way” method.
Here’s a close-up for Kathryn, who wanted to see the mesh more clearly. This photo is back-illuminated by the sun, and was taken with a piece of printer paper held behind the stitching:
Today’s double running band is yet another pattern that will be appearing in TNCM2.
It’s adapted from a drawn (rather than graphed) strip pattern appearing in Egenolff. The drawing however is clearly intended to be geometrical, and as you can see – translates easily to linear counted stitching. I will say that this gauzy linen is far better for the mesh darning and possibly solid voided work than it is for delicate double running. It’s tough to NOT distort the threads when stitching, which may be optimal for the pulled thread mesh, but is problematic for the other styles.
LONG GREEN – OFF TO A GOOD START
I’m having fun with my new frame, and playing with the mesh background voided style. As you can see, I’ve started with a very simple pattern:
This style is totally two-sided. And I can now see why so many fragments representing it are present in museum collections. It’s dense and tough as nails. Even with the mesh background, there are no loops or fragile surface to catch and no ends to fray (they’re all easily buried by overstitching). From looking at museum samples, the mesh background of mixed line stitch/voided pieces is rarely damaged. It’s usually the double running element that has breaks or skips. I’m very pleased with this and will do more with it. I’ll even try it at a smaller scale on this cloth later downstream.
I’ll also draw up some stitch diagrams on how I did it. I didn’t use standard gridded-cross-stitch (Italian two-sided cross stitch) logic. By noodling around I hit upon something that I was able to both count with greater ease, and use to achieve a more “meshy” output. But more on that when I manage to sketch up what the heck it is I’m doing.
SQUEE!
Folk who know me either through String or in person know that I’m generally not prone to enthusiastic gushing. Passionate ranting, perhaps, but prancing around in delight is not part of my idiom.
Until today.
I’ve been pacing the floors since my last big embroidery project ended, keeping busy by knitting small things:
Two pairs of socks and a pair of Fingerless Whatevers. Socks are headed to Elder Daughter, whose pitiful pleas will now be gratified.
But finally, my Needle Needs Millennium Frame has arrived, all the way from the UK:
I’ve wanted to get a new flat frame for quite a while. My old one having been bought in the early ’70s, using babysitting money when I was still in high school. Frame technology has advanced. I was very impressed by the review of the thing over at Needle ‘n Thread. Her pix are better than I could manage, and I agree with her observations wholeheartedly. The frame is well made, and works exactly as presented. It’s easy to load with the work (minimal frame dressing), easy to adjust, and a delight to use. All in all a quantum leap over my old one.
The only problem is one faced by all round frame enthusiasts when they “move up” to a flat frame. It’s large. You need three or four hands to use it. One or two to hold the frame, and two to stitch. But I’ve faced this problem before. Behold my ancient Grip-It frame, bought about 20 years ago when I started working on my Forever Coif:
It holds my Millennium nicely in its omnivorous grasp. Just barely, though. I will take the three bolts that make up the fastening mechanism of the jaws to the hardware store this weekend, and look for some that are a bit longer.
And if having this miracle of modern needlework support infrastructure wasn’t enough to hyperventilate about, I have more to celebrate!
If you’re familiar with 16th and 17th century embroidery – the long red pattern strips that probably bordered domestic linens – you’ve seen that odd mesh background. Some museums call it “Punto di Milano”. Others call it “Point Lace” “Punto Quadro” or “Tela Tirata.”
This is the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s artifact “Strip.” Accession number 79.1.81.c
Stitch attributions range all over, in part because there are several ways that a mesh background can be achieved (withdrawn thread; withdrawn thread to make a grid, then darning; pulled thread, etc.) Some books specify that these patterns used Italian Two-Sided Cross Stitch, others say Four-Sided Stitch in addition (or instead) of using an Italian stitch/style name. At this point, I’ll agree with them all because all are feasible. But after long experimentation I’ve finally found a method that’s achievable.
I played with several pulled thread stitches before coming up with this:
It’s the same pattern as the museum piece. I’m working the mesh in two passes. The first is an easy to count pass of double sided cross stitch, worked double and pulled very tightly. The second is a pass in which the bars formed between the cross stitch are whipped four times (two times on edges butting up on un-mesh areas). It’s totally two-sided, identical front and back. While not exactly speedy, using the initial pass to establish the counted pattern is easy, and the fill-in whipping to create the mesh is far less think-intensive than working the same pattern in hard-to-see-the-count long-armed cross stitch. Is this Punto di Milano or Tela Tirata? I am not sure. But it’s darn close!
Requisites for production:
- Flat frame on a stand. You need two hands to do this.
- Relatively loosely woven ground cloth. Most modern even weaves are too dense. This nice, airy piece of linen was provided by StitchPal Pam (Hi, Pam!), who found it too gauzy for her needs. But it’s perfect for mine.
- High thread count ground. Although the weave density on this is good, it’s a bit coarse for this work. To achieve the compression that leaves nice big holes, stitches need to span 3-4 (or more) threads. I’m using 40 count here, stitching over 4 threads. 60 count would be MUCH better, although I’d have to find finer silk thread. I’ll have to investigate this on a future project.
- Silk thread. Cotton isn’t strong enough for all the pulling. Linen would have the strength, but it would be thicker, filling the holes more (and it was also done in linen historically, for white on white stitching).
- Slightly blunted slender needle with a small eye. This is only one strand of silk floss, and you need to spread rather than pierce the ground cloth threads. Still, a total tapestry blunt is too rounded for this delicate work.
Yaay!
String-Or-Nothing 
