INSPIRED BY A QUEEN'S EMBROIDERIES

Mary, Queen of Scots, was held captive by her cousin, Queen Elizabeth I, for almost twenty years before she was beheaded in 1587.  The last fifteen years of her imprisonment were spent in the company of Bess of Hardwick who, together with Mary, completed the now-famous embroideries found at Oxburgh Hall and Hardwick Castle.  (To see 17 of Mary's embroideries, go to www.vandaimages.com/ and search for Oxburgh Hangings.)  It is amazing to think that Mary did such detailed work -- her cruciform panels were worked on evenweave linen at 13 stitches to the inch -- despite the fact that "she is very shortsighted, being unable to read or do anything else unless she has her sight quite close to what she wishes to peruse or to see distinctly" (from a 1557 description given by Giovanni Michieli, the Venetian ambassador to her court).

I was fascinated to discover that Baltimore's Johns Hopkins University owns original copies of the natural history books of Ulisse Aldrovandi (1522-1605) that contain many of the motifs which Mary used. Lea Sears and I decided that we had to design new, tweaked versions of Mary's embroideries but utilizing all the basic elements of her originals.

This is the elephant panel (Victoria and Albert Museum, London).  It is an example of what all the panels looked like before they were cut down and appliqued onto large hangings.  These are the main elements of each panel.

1.  The cruciform outline, a modified Alisee Pattee cross, around the center motif
2.  The central motif of one animal, often with smaller motifs around it
3.  A banner with the animal's name
4.  Small motifs, sometimes different and sometimes all the same, in each outside corner
5.  Often the cypher or monogram of Mary

This drake is the first of our next set of "Inspired by Mary" designs.  In addition to using all the main elements of Mary's original designs, we continue to use colors that are appropriate for Renaissance embroidery.  We have, however, allowed ourselves the freedom to use the entire range of each color's shades in DMC floss.  This has given us a wider range of color options as well as "allowing" us to brighten up the designs.  The plain cruciform outline has been tweaked for greater emphasis, and the black-and-white border seems to make the whole design pop..

For a wonderful web site about Mary, go to Mary, Queen of Scots: Biography, Portraits, Primary Sources. Of particular interest, under Primary Sources, is a contemporary description by Giovanni Michieli.

The following books are recommended for further reading.

Bath, Michael.  Emblems for a Queen: The Needlework of Mary Queen of Scots.  London: Archetype Publications, 2008.

Levey, Santina.  The Embroideries at Hardwick Hall: A Catalogue.  London: National Trust, 2007.

Swain, Margaret.  The Needlework of Mary Queen of Scots.  Carlton: Ruth Bean, 1986.

To see some of the original animals that Mary used in her embroideries, view Dover Publications' book and CD-Rom titled Gerner's Curious and Fantastic Beasts.

CROSS STITCHES

There are actually two different types of cross stitches -- long-armed and equal-armed -- both of which have been used in embroidery before 1600. As seen in this modern Scandinavian motif, long-armed cross-stitch provides a wonderfully-textured surface in larger red and blue areas of the crowned heart while the equal-armed cross-stitch are used singly. To stitch a long-armed cross-stitch, the initial thread goes over two squares with the top stitch going back only over one square.

An historical example using both types of cross-stitch can be seen in a pillow found in the tomb of Ferdinand de la Cerda who died in 1275 CE in Spain. The original was stitched in silk and resides in the museum at Las Huelgas near Burgos. To see all the textiles from these amazing Spanish burials, see Manuel Gomez-Moreno's book, El Panteon Real de las Huelgas de Burgos (Madrid, 1946).

A fragment of an Egyptian Mamluk (1250-1517) embroidery in red, yellow, and blue silk on linen uses both herringbone stitch and cross-stitch. This fragment is currently in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and can be seen in Marianne Ellis' beautiful book, Embroideries and Samplers from Islamic Egypt (Oxford, 2001).

But are these "counted" cross-stitches? Well, yes, if you consider that you need to count threads in the ground fabric in order to make evenly-stitched and evenly-spaced cross-stitches. The modern notion of "counted" cross-stitch assumes that the stitcher is working from a chart or graph and "counting" exactly the number of various stitches in various colors. It is difficult to say, in many instances, whether a stitcher used a chart or not. Before the advent of printing, patterns would have had to have been handwritten. As far as I know, there are no existing handwritten patterns for cross-stitch.

For example, was this design of two affronting birds stitched freehand or worked from a chart? We do not know. It was worked in four colors of wool on linen and measures, without the fringe, 13.5 cm (ca. 7-1/2") across the width of the band. It was possibly worked at Kloster Lune near Luneburg in Germany about 1500 CE. This and other fascinating embroideries from this cloister can be found in Horst Appuhn's book, Bildstickereien des Mittelalters in Kloster Lune (Dortmund, 1983).

This charming little couple, from a handkerchief of possibly Moravian origin, was stitched on linen with red silk in 1560. The figures are worked in cross-stitch, and, again, we do not know if a chart of any sort was used. It seems quite possible that they were done freehand. The woman holds a flower while the man holds a cup or jug of some sort. The handkerchief is currently in the Moravian Museum in Brno.

For many years, the embroideries that were done by Mary, Queen of Scots, while she was held captive by Elizabeth I were considered to have been done in tent stitch which is basically the first half of a cross-stitch and generally worked on canvas as a needlepoint stitch. However, close examination in recent years has shown that Mary's work was done in very fine cross-stitching. And this was definitely not counted cross-stitch: an artist was hired to draw the underlying designs on the fabric which Mary then stitched over. The tiger is an example of her work, one of many now hanging at Oxburgh Hall in Norfolk, England, which can be seen in Gill Speirs and Sigrid Quemby's book, A Treasury of Embroidery Designs (London, 1985). Arelate Studio has a current new line of designs based on Mary's original embroideries.

Printed model books were popular by the 16th century, and eventually "samplers" became a popular form of embroidery. (Samplers are, however, not even that "modern": Egyptian stitchers were working samplers of various stitches as early as the Ayyubid period - late 12th to 13th centuy CE. See the Ellis book cited above.) This is a detail of the famous "Jane Bostocke Sampler", the earliest dated sampler. Now in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London with an excellent picture of the whole sampler in Susan Mayor and Diana Fowle's book, Samplers (Wakefield RI, 1996), Jane used a great variety of stitches, including cross-stitch. It seems very probable that she was working from patterns.