Jacobean embroidery
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Jacobean embroidery refers to embroidery styles that flourished in the reign of King James I of England in first quarter of the 17th century.
The term is usually used today to describe a form of crewel embroidery used for furnishing characterized by fanciful plant and animal shapes worked in a variety of stitches with two-ply wool yarn on linen. Popular motifs in Jacobean embroidery, especially curtains for bed hangings, are the Tree of Life and stylized forests, usually rendered as exotic plants arising from a landscape or terra firma with birds, stags, squirrels, and other familiar animals.[1][2]
Origins
[edit]Early Jacobean embroidery often featured scrolling floral patterns worked in colored silks on linen, a fashion that arose in the earlier Elizabethan era. Embroidered jackets were fashionable for both men and women in the period 1600-1620, and several of these jackets have survived.
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Designs
[edit]Often based on tree of life imagery, curving branches with large flowers were a typical design. Early crewel embroideries exclusively used wool thread on linen (modern crewel embroidery encompasses a broader range with the only requirement being extensive use of crewel stitch variations).[3]
Legacy
[edit]Jacobean embroidery was carried by British colonists to Colonial America, where it flourished. The Deerfield embroidery movement of the 1890s revived interest in colonial and Jacobean styles of embroidery.
Gallery
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Sketch of a leaf worked in indigo, brown, and light green[1]
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Portion of a 17th-century hanging "with a conventional representation
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Embroidered wool-work curtain of the 17th or 18th century[2]
See also
[edit]Notes
[edit]- ^ a b c d Fitzwilliam, Ada Wentworth and A. F. Morris Hands, Jacobean Embroidery, Its Forms and Fillings Including Late Tudor, Keegan Paul, 1912
- ^ a b c Christie, Grace: Embroidery and Tapestry Weaving, London 1912
- ^ Nichols, Marion (1974). Encyclopedia of Embroidery Stitches Including Crewel. ISBN 0-486-22929-7.
References
[edit]- Christie, Mrs. Archibald (Grace Christie), Embroidery and Tapestry Weaving, London, John Hogg, 1912, online at Project Gutenberg
- Fitzwilliam, Ada Wentworth and A. F. Morris Hands, Jacobean Embroidery, Its Forms and Fillings Including Late Tudor, Keegan Paul, 1912
External links
[edit]![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/4/4a/Commons-logo.svg/30px-Commons-logo.svg.png)
- Surviving Jacobean embroidered jacket as the Museum of Costume
- Jacobean Embroidery, by Ada Wentworth Fitzwilliam and A. F. Morris Hands, 1912, from Project Gutenberg